Broadhead, KY

Kenneth Nack

Modernist printmaker Kenneth Nack (1923-2009) did this lithograph in 1946 after being processed out of the US Army. Like so many veterans who turned to art when returning, many studying through the G.I. Bill, Nack rejected the prevailing regionalist imagery for a looser, more gestural approach, such as this composition.

(Brodhead) Broadhead (sic), Kentucky is a small town (population around 1200 now) located in Southeastern, Kentucky. It is a stop for the L&N Railroad. Nack depicts a series of two-story row houses with stoops, though modern Brodhead does not appear to have any such buildings left.

Kenneth George Nack was born in Chicago on 14 January 1923. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1941 to 1943. In 1942, he won the Kuppenheimer Scholarship in the School and, in 1943, he was awarded the Clyde M. Carr Prize at the 47th Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago and Vicinity (ACV). He served in the United States Army between 1943 and 1946 but still managed to exhibit work in the Artists of Chicago and Vicinity annuals in 1944, 1945, and 1946; later, he would return to the AVC for the consecutive exhibitions of 1949 - 1953.

After his discharge from the Army, Nack returned to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his master's degree in fine arts in 1949. In 1947 he won an award at the Pepsi-Cola Fourth Annucal Exhibition, New York (Paintings of the Year), and a prize at the Old Northwest Territory Art Exhibition held at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. Nack joined Harold Zussin for a two-person show at the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall of 1948. After 1949, Nack moved to Paris, where he studied with Fernand Léger. In 1950, he was featured in LIFE magazine as one of the nineteen best young American painters, followed by an exhibition of the paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Nack's early work was inspired by his environment and he created abstract interpretations, most notably of Chicago’s urban areas. He traveled extensively in Mexico and Europe and ran a gallery in San Francisco before he finally settled in Santa Barbara, California. He taught at Santa Barbara City College where he was Chair of the Art Department for thirty-five years.

Nack died in Santa Barbara, California on December 12, 2009.