Alex Katz
Vivien, 2009 (left) and Black Brook 7, 1989 (right)
In the words of Kiko Aebi, Katz's curator at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville (Maine): “Over his more than seven-decade career, he has charted a singular path, producing some of the most iconic images of our time. Whether in his portraits of friends and family or depictions of the Maine landscape, his work attunes us to the very ways we see and interact with the world around us. Additionally, his contributions to theater and dance and numerous projects made in partnership with poets have expanded the notion of artistic collaboration. Few artists have so indelibly shaped the course of art in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
White House, 2005 (left), Katherine and Elizabeth, 2012 (middle), and Ada with White Hat and Sunglasses, 2007 (right)
From that stage his inspiration comes from his closest environment, being his wife Ada his main muse, and from then on he focused on the female figure as the protagonist of his most recognizable paintings. In his tireless search for beauty in what surrounds him, the faces of women from his circle of family and friends have always been present, as we can see in the portraits of Ada with White Hat and Sunglasses (2007) and his daughter-in-law Vivien (2009); as well as those of some of his regular models: Katherine and Elizabeth (2012), in a double portrait of summer tone, and Ariel (2011), in which the face of large proportions and in the foreground is cut out against a bold yellow background, so characteristic of some of his works of that decade but already employed in the eighties.
Up in the Bleachers, 1983 (left background), Red Door, 2005 (left), Ariel, 2011 (middle), and White House, 2005 (right)
In the late 1940s Katz studied at the Skowhegan School on the coast of Maine, where he became interested in landscape as motif after experimenting with plein air painting, although it was not until the mid-1980s that he approached these compositions of the rural environment in which he spent his summers in a more gestural and abstract manner. A more instinctive than descriptive development refers to the spontaneity of the execution, although it follows a meticulous preparatory process. In some of these works, light itself becomes the defining theme; he is fascinated by the fleetingness of the reflections at different times of the day and his ability to translate this rapid perception into a lasting image.
Ada with White Hat and Sunglasses, 2007
Oil on canvas
168 x 122 cm / 66 x 48 in
Katherine and Elizabeth, 2012
Oil on canvas
213,5 x 468 cm / 84 x 184 in
White House, 2005
Oil on linen
213,5 x 152,5 cm / 84 x 60 in
Ariel, 2011
Oil on linen
203 x 213,5 cm / 80 x 84 in
Red door, 2005
Oil on linen
320,5 x 244,5 cm / 126 x 96 in
The Raft, 2004
Oil on linen
183 x 244 cm / 72 x 96 in
Black brook 7, 1989
Oil on linen
182,5 x 244,5 cm / 72 x 96 in
Vivien, 2009
Oil on linen
152,5 x 213,5 cm / 60 x 84 in
White pine # 2, 2003
Oil on linen
183 x 488,5 cm / 72 x 192 in
