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Alex Katz

American artist (born )

This article is about the artist. For the baseball player, see Alex Katz (baseball).

Alex Katz (born July 24, ) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Since , Katz's work has been the subject of more than solo exhibitions and nearly group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.

He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are considered as precursors to Pop Art.

Early life and career

Alex Katz was born July 24, , to a Jewish family[1] in Brooklyn, New York, the son of an émigré who had lost a factory he owned in Ukraine, Odesa.[2] In the family moved to St.

Albans, Queens, where Katz grew up.[3]

From to Katz studied at the Cooper Union in New York, and from to at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Alex katz paintings online: His works celebrate the everyday and elevate it to a new level of perception through a pared-down yet vibrant representation. Katz pre-mixes all his colors and gets his brushes ready. Type: museum Honolulu Museum of Art. Alex Katz b.

Skowhegan exposed him to painting from life, which proved pivotal in his development as a painter and remains a staple of his practices today. Katz has said that Skowhegan's plein air painting gave him "a reason to devote my life to painting."[4] Every year from early June to mid-September, Katz moves from his SoHo loft to a 19th-century clapboard farmhouse in Lincolnville, Maine.[5] A summer resident of Lincolnville since , he has developed a close relationship with Colby College.[citation needed] From to , he made a number of small collages of still lifes, Maine landscapes, and small figures.[6] He met Ada Del Moro, who had studied biology at New York University, at a gallery opening in [2] In , Katz had his first (and only) son, Vincent Katz.

Vincent Katz had two sons, Isaac and Oliver, who have been the subjects of Katz's paintings.

Katz has admitted to destroying a thousand paintings during his first ten years as a painter in order to find his style. Since the s, he worked to create art more freely in the sense that he tried to paint "faster than I can think".[7] His works seem simple, but according to Katz they are more reductive, which is fitting to his personality.[8] "One thing I don't want to do is things already done.

As for particular subject matter, I don't like narratives, basically."[9]

Work

Katz achieved public prominence in the s.[10] He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are now seen as precursors to Pop Art.[11]

Artistic style

Katz's paintings are divided almost equally into portraiture and landscape.

Since the s he has painted views of New York (especially his immediate surroundings in Soho) and landscapes of Maine, where he spends several months every year, as well as portraits of family members, artists, writers and New York socialites.[12] His paintings are defined by their flatness of color and form, their economy of line, and their emotional detachment.[13] A key source of inspiration is Kitagawa Utamaro's woodcuts.[14]

In the early s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces.

Ada Katz, whom he married in , has been the subject of over [15] of his portraits.[16] To make one of his large works, Katz paints a small oil sketch of a subject on a masonite board; the sitting might take an hour and a half.

Alex katz paintings portraits His paintings are defined by their flatness of colour and form, their economy of line, and their cool but seductive emotional detachment. Type: museum Albertina. Contemporary Art Day Auction. Young Trees Alex Katz

He then makes a small, detailed drawing in pencil or charcoal, with the subject returning, perhaps, for the artist to make corrections. Katz next blows up the drawing into a "cartoon", sometimes using an overhead projector, and transfers it to an enormous canvas via "pouncing"—a Renaissance-era technique involving powdered pigment pushed through tiny perforations pricked into the cartoon to recreate the composition on the surface to be painted.

Katz pre-mixes all his colors and gets his brushes ready. Then he paints the canvas—12 feet (&#;m) wide by 7 feet (&#;m) high or even larger—in a session of six or seven hours.

Beginning in the late s, Katz developed a technique of painting on cut panels, first of wood, then aluminum, calling them "cutouts".

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    • These works occupied space like sculptures, but their physicality is compressed into planes, as with paintings.[17] The later cutouts are attached to wide, U-shaped aluminum stands, with a flickering, cinematic presence enhanced by warm spotlights. Most are close-ups, showing either front-and-back views of the same figure's head or figures who regard each other from opposite edges of the stand.[18]

    After , Katz increasingly portrayed groups of figures.

    He continued painting these complex groups into the s, portraying the social world of painters, poets, critics, and other colleagues that surrounded him. He began designing sets and costumes for choreographer Paul Taylor in the early s, and he has painted many images of dancers throughout the years. One Flight Up () consists of more than 30 portraits of some of the leading lights of New York's intelligentsia during the late s, such as the poet John Ashbery, the art critic Irving Sandler, and the curator Henry Geldzahler, who championed Andy Warhol.

    Each portrait is painted using oils on both sides of a sliver of aluminum that has then been cut into the shape of the subject's head and shoulders. The silhouettes are arranged predominantly in four long rows on a plain metal table.[19]

    After his Whitney exhibition in , Katz focused on landscapes, saying, "I wanted to make an environmental landscape where you were IN it."[20] In the late s, Katz took on a new subject in his work: fashion models in designer clothing, including Kate Moss and Christy Turlington.[4] "I've always been interested in fashion because it's ephemeral", he said.[21]

    Printmaking

    In , Katz also embarked on a prolific career in printmaking.

    He went on to make many editions in lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodcut and linoleum cut, producing over print editions in his lifetime. The Albertina, Vienna, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hold complete collections of Katz's print oeuvre. The Albertina released a print catalogue raisonné in

    During his time as a visiting artist at the University of Pennsylvania, Katz approached Japanese artist and printmaker Hitoshi Nakazato, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Fine Art, to make a series of prints.[22]

    Public commissions

    In , Katz was asked to create a work to be produced in billboard format above Times Square, New York City.

    The work, at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, consisted of a frieze comprising 23 portrait heads of women.

    Alex katz paintings portraits of women View Lot. Katz's paintings are divided almost equally into the genres of portraiture and landscape. Contemporary art for sale online. Oyvind Fahlstrom -

    Each portrait was 20 feet (&#;m) high and based on a study Katz did from life. The billboard extended feet (75&#;m) along two sides of the RKO General building and wrapped in three tiers above on a foot (18&#;m) tower. In , the U.S. General Services Administration's Art in Architecture Program commissioned Katz to create an oil-on-canvas mural in the new United States Attorney's Building at Foley Square, New York City.

    The mural, inside the Silvio V. Mollo Building at Cardinal Hayes Place & Park Row, is 20 feet (&#;m) high by 20 feet wide.[23] In , Katz participated in a public art project titled "Paint in the City", commissioned by United Technologies Corporation and organized by Creative Time. Katz's work, Give Me Tomorrow, was 28 feet (&#;m) tall and 53 feet (16&#;m) long on a billboard space above the Bowery Bar on the corner of the Bowery and East Fourth Street.

    It was hand-painted by sign painters and installed in [24]

    Collaborations

    Katz has collaborated with poets and writers since the s, producing several notable editions, such as "Face of the Poet",[25] combining his images with work by poets in his circle, such as Ted Berrigan, Ann Lauterbach, Carter Ratcliff, and Gerard Malanga.

    He worked with John Ashbery on the publications "Fragment"[26] in and "Coma Berenices"[27] in He worked with Vincent Katz on "A Tremor in the Morning"[28] and "Swimming Home".[29] Katz also made 25 etchings for the Arion Press edition of Gloria with 28 poems by Bill Berkson.

    Other collaborators include Robert Creeley, with whom he produced "Edges"[30] and "Legeia: A Libretto",[31] and Kenneth Koch ("Interlocking Lives").[32] In , Harper's Bazaar incorporated cutouts by Katz for a four-page fashion spread.

    Numerous publications outline Katz's career's many facets: from Alex Katz in Maine[33] published by the Farnsworth Art Museum to the catalogue Alex Katz New York[34] published by the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

    Alex Katz Seeing Drawing, Making,[35] published in , describes Katz's multiple-stage process of first producing charcoal drawings, small oil studies, and large cartoons for placing the image on the canvas and the final painting.

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    • In , Phaidon Press published an illustrated survey, Alex Katz, by Carter Ratcliff, Robert Storr and Iwona Blazwick. In , a special edition of Parkett was devoted to Katz.[36]Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Liam Gillick, Peter Halley, David Salle, and Richard Prince have written essays about his work or conducted interviews with him.[37]

    Exhibitions

    Since , Katz's work has been the subject of more than solo exhibitions and nearly group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.[3] Katz's first solo show was an exhibition of paintings at the Roko Gallery in New York in In the Whitney Museum of American Art showed Alex Katz Prints, followed by a traveling retrospective exhibition of paintings and cutouts titled Alex Katz in The subject of over solo exhibitions and nearly group shows internationally, Katz has since had retrospectives at museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Colby College Museum of Art, Maine; Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden; Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; and the Saatchi Gallery, London.[38] In , a survey of his landscapes was shown at the P.S.

    1 Contemporary Art Center, featuring nearly 40 pared-down paintings of urban or pastoral motifs.[39]

    Katz is represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York, Timothy Taylor Gallery in London, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris/Salzburg. Before showing with Brown, he had been represented by Pace Gallery for 10 years and by Marlborough Gallery for 30 years.[40]

    Katz's prints are distributed in Europe by Galerie Frank Fluegel in Nuremberg.

    In , a retrospective of his work was on display at the Thyssen National Museum of Spain, the first time Katz´s work had been displayed in that country.

    Collections

    Katz's work is in the collections of over public institutions worldwide, including the Honolulu Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Tate Gallery, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo; the Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and the Museum Brandhorst, Munich.[41] In , Anthony d'Offay donated a group of Katz's works to the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate; they are shown as part of the national touring programme, Artist Rooms.[42][43] In , Katz donated Rush (), a series of 37 painted life-size cutout heads on aluminum, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the piece is installed, frieze-like, in its own space.[44]

    Recognition

    Katz has received numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Painting in , and in both Pratt Institute's Mary Buckley Award for Achievement and the Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement.

    The Chicago Bar Association honored Katz with the Award for Art in Public Places in In , Katz received a U.S. government grant to participate in an educational and cultural exchange with the USSR.[45] He was inducted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in , and recognized with honorary doctorates by Colby College, Maine (), and Colgate University, Hamilton, New York ().

    In he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an associate member, and he became a full Academician in He was named the Philip Morris Distinguished Artist at the American Academy in Berlin in and received the Cooper Union Annual Artist of the City Award in In , Cooper Union Art School created the Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting with an endowment provided by the sale of ten paintings Katz donated, a position held first by Katz and art critic Merlin James.[46] In , Katz was the honored artist at the Chicago Humanities Festival's Inaugural Richard Gray Annual Visual Arts Series.

    In , he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Design, New York.[38]

    In October , the Colby College Museum of Art opened a 10,square-foot (&#;m2) wing dedicated to Katz that features more than oil paintings, collages, and prints he donated.[47] In addition, he has purchased numerous pieces for the museum by artists such as Jennifer Bartlett, Chuck Close, Francesco Clemente, and Elizabeth Murray.

    In , he curated a show at Colby of younger painters Elizabeth Peyton, Peter Doig and Merlin James, who work in the same figurative territory staked out by Katz.[2]

    In , Vincent Katz and Vivien Bittencourt produced a video, Alex Katz: Five Hours, documenting the production of his painting January 3,[48] and in he was the subject of a documentary directed by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, What About Style?

    Alex Katz: a Painter's Painter.

    Legacy

    Katz's work is said to have influenced many painters, such as David Salle, Helena Wurzel, Peter Halley, and Richard Prince,[13] as well as younger artists like Peter Doig, Julian Opie, Liam Gillick, Elizabeth Peyton, Barb Januszkiewicz, Johan Andersson,[19] and Brian Alfred.[15]

    Notes and references

    1. ^Snider, Suzanne, "Why do Alex Katz's elegant canvases strike critics as the ultimate in WASP art?", Tablet, A New Read on Jewish Life, November 21,
    2. ^ abcCathleen McGuigan (August ), Alex Katz Is Cooler Than EverArchived at the Wayback MachineSmithsonian Magazine.
    3. ^ abALEX KATZ: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art, June 29 - October 13, Archived September 29, , at the Wayback MachineNassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor.
    4. ^ abAlex Katz.

      "Alex Katz". Phaidon, p.

    5. ^Grace Glueck (September 9, ), Clever Collages and Quiet Maine Scenes: Two Sides of Alex KatzThe New York Times.
    6. ^"Alex Katz in Conversation with Phong Bui". Brooklyn Rail. May
    7. ^Shama, Simon, Dave Hickey, Alanna Heiss.

      Alex katz paintings for sale Browse all Artists Alex Katz. Allan D'Arcangelo - English German. The subject of over solo shows and group exhibitions since , Katz has been featured in major retrospectives throughout his lifetime, and his work is in the permanent collections of almost international institutions.

      "Alex Katz Under the Stars: American Landscapes –" (exh. cat.). New York: The Institute for Contemporary Art/ P. S. 1 Museum,

    8. ^Robert Ayers (January 18, ), National Alex Katz, ARTINFO, retrieved
    9. ^David Salle (March 4, ), In Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, retrieved
    10. ^Alex KatzMuseum of Modern Art, New York.
    11. ^Alex Katz, Lilies Against Yellow House () National Galleries of Scotland.
    12. ^Alex Katz: FACE THE MUSIC, October 20 - November 19, Archived November 1, , at the Wayback MachineGalerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris.
    13. ^ abAlex Katz, 19 May – 23 September Archived 4 March at the Wayback Machine Tate St Ives.
    14. ^Alex Katz: Fashion and Studies, January 14 - February 14, [permanent dead link&#;]Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris.
    15. ^ abMartha Schwendener (August 29, ), Overcoming the Orthodoxy of AbstractionThe New York Times.
    16. ^Lawrence Alloway, "Alex Katz Paints Ada".

      Yale University Press, p.

    17. ^Carter Ratcliff, "Alex Katz, Cutouts" Hatje Cantz Publishers, , p. 26
    18. ^Karen Rosenberg (February 13, ), Alex Katz / Dara FriedmanThe New York Times.
    19. ^ abAlastair Sooke (May 17, ), Alex Katz at the National Portrait GalleryThe Daily Telegraph.
    20. ^Alex Katz, "Invented Symbols", Cantz Verlag, , p.

      87

    21. ^Cathleen McGuigan (), National Alex Katz, Smithsonian Magazine, archived from the original on , retrieved
    22. ^Katz, Alex (), Nancy, retrieved
    23. ^"Alex Katz - Public Art".
    24. ^"Alex Katz - Public Art".
    25. ^Berrigan, Ted et al.

      (Kenward Elmslie, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Michael Lally, Ann Lauterbach, Gerard Malanga, Alice Notley, John Perreault, Carter Ratcliff, Rene Ricard, Peter Schjeldahl, Tony Towle, Bill Zavatsky) and Alex Katz. "Face of the Poet", New York: Brooke Alexander, Inc., NY and Marlborough Graphics,

    26. ^Ashbery, John and Alex Katz, "Fragment" Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press,
    27. ^Ashbery, John and Alex Katz, "Coma Berenices".

      Photogravure images by Alex Katz; with text by John Ashbery. Tampa: Graphicstudio, Institute for Research in Art, ]

    28. ^Katz, Vincent and Alex Katz, "A Tremor In The Morning", New York: Peter Blum Edition, ]
    29. ^Katz, Vincent and Alex Katz, "Swimming Home", Photogravure images by Alex Katz with poem by Vincent Katz.

      Tampa: Graphicstudio/University of South Florida,

    30. ^Creeley, Robert and Alex Katz, "Edges" New York: Peter Blum Edition, ]
    31. ^Creeley, Robert, "Ligeia: A Libretto" Set design sketch by Alex Katz. New York and Minneapolis: Granary Books; Hermetic Press,
    32. ^Koch, Kenneth and Alex Katz, "Interlocking Lives" New York: Kulchur Press,
    33. ^Schwartz, Sanford and Vincent Katz.

      "Alex Katz in Maine". Milan, Italy and Rockland, Maine: Charta; The Farnsworth Art Museum,

    34. ^Bonet, Juan Manuel. New York. Dublin, Ireland: Irish Museum of Modern art and Charta,
    35. ^Moos, David and Kadee Robbins, "Alex Katz Seeing Drawing Making", Windsor Press,
    36. ^[1]Archived at the Wayback Machine
    37. ^"Alex Katz: An American Way of Seeing".

      Sara Hilden Art Museum, Musee de Grenoble, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, p.

      Alex katz biography Type: museum Whitney Museum of American Art. Sign up for our free newsletter to be the first notified about new artworks and limited editions. Eduardo Paolozzi - Type: lot Category: Lot.

    38. ^ abAlex Katz Timothy Taylor Gallery, London.
    39. ^Roberta Smith (May 1, ), A 2d Look Reveals SurprisesThe New York Times.
    40. ^Sarah Douglas (September 13, ), (When Gavin Brown Met Alex Katz: An Artist's New Show Is At An Unexpected VenueThe New York Observer.
    41. ^Alex Katz, September 10 – October 08, Archived October 13, , at the Wayback Machine Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York.
    42. ^Alex Katz, 4 March - 9 April Timothy Taylor Gallery, London.
    43. ^"ARTIST ROOMS: Alex Katz - Tate".

      Archived from the original on Retrieved

    44. ^Alex Katz Prints, April 28, - July 29, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
    45. ^Sara Hilden Art Museum, "Alex Katz: An American Way of Seeing". Sara Hilden Art Museum, Musee de Grenoble, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, p.
    46. ^James, Merlin. "Painting per se" lecture delivered at Cooper Union Great Hall, New York, 28th February
    47. ^, accessed September 21,
    48. ^"Alex Katz Films & Videos".

      Archived from the original on Retrieved

    Bibliography

    • Carter Ratcliff, Robert Storr, Iwona Blazwick, Barry Schwabsky, ALEX KATZ, Phaidon Press, , ISBN&#;
    • Mark Rappolt, ALEX KATZ: FACE THE MUSIC, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, , ISBN&#;
    • Klaus Albrecht Schröde, ALEX KATZ: PRINTS, Hatje Cantz, , ISBN&#;
    • Roland Mönig, Guy Tosatto, Timo Valjakka, Eric de Chassey, ALEX KATZ: AN AMERICAN WAY OF SEEING, , ISBN&#;
    • David A.

      Moos, ALEX KATZ: SEEING, DRAWING, MAKING, Windsor Press, , ISBN&#;

    • Luca Cerizza, ALEX KATZ: FACES AND NAMES, JRP|Ringier, , ISBN&#;
    • Enrique Juncosa, Juan Manuel Bonet, Rachael Thomas, ALEX KATZ: NEW YORK, Charta / Irish Museum of Modern Art, , ISBN&#;
    • Barry Schwabsky, ALEX KATZ: THE SIXTIES, Charta, , ISBN&#;
    • David Cohen, Sharon Corwin, ALEX KATZ: COLLAGES, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, , ISBN&#;
    • Carter Ratcliff, Robert Storr, Iwona Blazwick, ALEX KATZ, Phaidon, , ISBN&#;

    External links