Abstract Artist Kenneth Callahan Dies in Seattle After Brief Illness

SEATTLE — Kenneth Callahan, a painter whose works are displayed in some of the nation’s leading museums, has died at the age of 81.

Bruce Guenther, curator of contemporary art at the Seattle museum, said Callahan’s work “celebrated the forces of nature and the spirit of man, and how they came together.”

The abstract artist, who moved to Seattle two years ago, had turned his attention recently to urban life, in contrast with the sea and light studies that dominated his work during two decades at Long Beach, on the Washington coast.

Callahan, who died Thursday at his Seattle home after a brief illness, was born in Spokane and began painting with watercolors at age 7 while growing up in Glasgow, Mont.

“The only thing that kept me from being beaten up by the other kids, because I was painting, was the fact that Ralph Breckenridge, a Blackfoot Indian and local bronc champ, also painted,” he once said.

The famous cowboy painter Charles Russell was a visitor to the Callahan home.

Callahan was a visiting art professor or artist at Penn State University, Boston University, Syracuse University and USC. Among his honors were a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

His works are included in collections at the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, Corcoran Gallery, the Chicago Art Institute, San Francisco Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum.

In addition to his son, Brian, Callahan is survived by his wife, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.