About the artist:

Olivia Kahn was born into a prominent New York City family and devoted her life to making art. A cultural omnivore who lived and worked in Manhattan her entire adult life, she relished artistic expression in all forms from painting and opera to literature and the Broadway stage. Her father, the architect Ely Jacques Kahn, designed many of Manhattan’s signature Modernist buildings. Her brother, longtime New Yorker staff writer E.J. Kahn Jr., wrote dozens of books and hundreds of magazine pieces as a globe-trotting journalist. Her sister, Joan Kahn, was the queen of American mystery editors. As her first reader and constant traveling companion, Olivia helped publish a long list of popular British and American authors, among them Dick Francis, Dorothy Sayers, Tony Hillerman, Patricia Highsmith, Michael Gilbert, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. After graduating from the Horace Mann School and Bryn Mawr College, Olivia studied at the Art Students League. She and her sister traveled to Europe each summer from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. In favorite haunts like Rome, Athens, and London, Olivia filled her sketchbooks with images and landscapes that caught her discerning eye. Back in her Lower Manhattan studio, whether working in oil painting, printmaking, ceramics, or watercolor, she proved to be a disciplined, industrious artist who never sought commercial fame yet was amazingly prolific. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows, including ones mounted at the Library of Congress and National Association of Women Artists. Olivia continued working in her studio into her early 90s. She died in Manhattan on Dec. 20, 2015 and is survived by her nephews, grand-nephews and nieces, and many other family members and friends who loved and admired her. This website honors Olivia's talent, vision, and dedication as a working artist.