The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT has announced the opening of ALEX KATZ: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art, a solo exhibition of works by one of America’s most honored living artists, on Sunday, December 8, 2013.
The exhibition, which remains on view through March 16, 2014, draws upon the Whitney’s extensive holdings of art by Alex Katz and includes the brilliantly-colored portraits of family and friends that are a hallmark of the artist’s career as well as early landscapes and collages.
Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout this country and internationally. His many credits include two honorary doctorate degrees, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum in New York, a Philip Morris Distinguished Artist Award from the American Academy in Berlin, and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art’s Annual Artist of the City Award.
Katz was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and grew up in the St. Albans section of Queens. His Russian-born parents shared a deep interest in the arts. At Cooper Union’s School of Art, Katz was trained in modern art theories and techniques, later earning a scholarship for summer study at Maine’s Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. He has said that his experience of painting plein air at Skowhegan gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.”
In New York during the 1950s, resisting the dominant abstractionism of the time, Katz associated with other figurative painters, among them Larry Rivers and Fairfield Porter. Toward the latter part of the decade, his work evolved towards greater realism. Katz became increasingly interested in portraiture with monochrome backgrounds, painting his friends and family and especially his wife and muse, Ada. Influenced by panoramic films and billboard advertising during the 1960s, Katz began creating large-scale paintings, often depicting dramatically cropped faces in a style that was to become his artistic signature. The power of Katz’s portraits, said Dana Miller, Curator, Permanent Collection, of the Whitney Museum of American Art, “…comes from their color and their scale.”
The Mattatuck Museum will offer several programs in conjunction with the exhibition including a film screening of Alex Katz: What About Style? on Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 5:30 p.m. This 56-minute video by filmmaker and art critic Heinz Peter Schwerfel captures Katz laboring over a 32-foot painting, The Black Brook. For details on this and other events, visit www.MattatuckMuseum.org/events.
This exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
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Images from the exhibition:
Alex Katz, b. 1927. The Green Cap, (1985). Wood block, Sheet (Irregular): 17 11/16 x 24 1/8in. (44.9 x 61.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Print Committee 87.17 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.
Alex Katz, b. 1927 Lincolnville Beach, 1956. Oil on canvas, 48 3/16 x 70 5/16in. (122.4 x 178.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 88.49 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.
Alex Katz, b. 1927 The Red Smile, 1963. Oil on canvas, 78 7/8 x 115in. (200.3 x 292.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 83.3 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Photograph by Bill Orcutt
Alex Katz, b. 1927 Eli, 1963. Oil on canvas, 73 5/8 x 95 5/16in. (187 x 242.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Fischbach 64.37 Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins
Alex Katz (b 1927), “Swamp Maple II,” 1970, lithograph, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist and Brooke Alexander, Inc. Art ©Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y. Digital Image ©Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.
Alex Katz (b 1927), Day Lily II, (1969), Lithograph, 20 3/4 x 28 inches. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase 70.32. Art © Alex Katz/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
More images here