calendario eventi  :: 

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23/11/2011

Two exhibitions

Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover

Alex Katz
Naked beauty

The American painter Alex Katz (b. 1927 in Brooklyn, lives in New York) will be showing a series of life paintings covering the period from 1980s to the present day, juxtaposed with selected city views of New York in his show at the kestnergesellschaft. In this way, two extremes coincide in the exhibition »naked beauty«: the human body and architecture stand side by side and tell the story of the capacity of Katz’s painting to transform subjective impressions into universal symbols.

Until now, Alex Katz’s life studies have never been gathered together in such a concentration and profusion within the framework of one exhibition. With his characteristically focused works replete with crisp lines and surfaces, the painter explores the relationship between the figure and the painting’s ground, creating singularly beautiful paintings that are also universally symbolic at the same time, thereby facilitating an interplay of proximity to and cool distance from the motifs. The city views of New York shown in tandem with the life studies are drawn from interesting situations and forms of everyday life, which, alongside the direct encounter with the life model, represent the material for his paintings. By means of the juxtaposition of life painting and urban landscape, the kestnergesellschaft is initiating a discussion on the essence of Alex Katz’s painterly enquiries: the translation of fleeting moments of perception in form and surface, the creation of perfect, cool planes of colour using the traditional means of painting. Alex Katz succeeds in capturing the specificity of a situation or a person in his compositions and thereby simultaneously creating an ideal type of representation. Katz paints with manifest ease and his paintings manage to generate their effect ranging between the impression of concrete snapshots and the creation of universal symbols.

Numbered among the most important contemporary American painters, Alex Katz became famous above all on account of his larger than life-sized portraits. Katz developed his characteristic style comprising clear lines and planes of colour during the 1950s – in bold contrast at that time to the predominance of Abstract Impressionism. He developed a completely individual visual language with his constant flattening out of different pictorial elements, a language which to this day influences contemporary figurative painting and which pre-empted Pop Art of the 1960s.

In 1986, The New York Whitney Museum of American Art dedicated the first retrospective to Alex Katz, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art followed suit in 1988 with a retrospective exhibition of his prints. In Germany comprehensive solo exhibitions were afforded the artist among others by the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (1995) and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2003). The Albertina (Vienna) presented an extensive show featuring his graphic works in 2004. Alex Katz’s works are to be found in over 100 public collections across the globe, above all in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin and the Tate Gallery, London.

Catalogue
The Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg will publish an 80-page catalogue on the exhibition, with over 40 Illustrations. In English and German with a foreword by Veit Görner and essays by Morgan Falconer and Kathrin Meyer.

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Alice Springs
People

In a comprehensive show entitled »people«, the kestnergesellschaft will present around 150 works taken over the past 40 years by the photographer Alice Springs (b. 1923 in Melbourne, proper name June Newton, née June Brown). Using the pseudonym Alice Springs, Helmut Newton’s wife began to develop her own photographic oeuvre in 1970. Although international stars take centre stage in the kestnergesellschaft show, Alice Springs’ friends and acquaintances also feature centrally. The exhibition is a joint venture in conjunction with the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin.

The featured list of artists, actors and musicians photographed by Alice Springs reads like a veritable »Who’s Who« of the international cultural scene on both sides of the Atlantic over the past four decades. The exhibition in the kestnergesellschaft brings together iconic photographs of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, Billy Wilder and Federico Fellini, Robert Mapplethorpe and Gerhard Richter, but also a number of portrait series, such as that of the Monte Carlo Ballet. Alice Springs’ not only document the appearance of celebrities and contemporary figures, but also manages to capture a sense of their charisma, indeed their very aura.

June Newton discovered photography almost by accident in 1970 having previously worked as a successful actress and radio presenter. Due to her husband’s ill-health, she stood in at short notice on one of his photo shoots and henceforward adopted the pseudonym Alice Springs for her photographic work. The publication of her first advertising image for the French cigarette brand »Gitanes« gave her a green light for her new career. Further commissions in the fields of advertising and fashion were soon to follow. In 1974, her first motif made the cover of the French fashion magazine Elle. A selection of her early photographs will also be on show at the kestnergesellshaft.

The Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin showed the first retrospective of Alice Springs’ photographs last year. Springs’ works have been shown there regularly in alternating exhibitions since 2005 and before that, they featured in different solo exhibitions held at a variety of venues worldwide, for example at the Victorian Art Centre Melbourne (1997), the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn (1991), or the Museo Contemporáneo, Mexico City (1990).

Taschen published a 114-page catalogue in 2010 with over 250 illustrations on the retrospective held at the Helmut Newton Foundation. In English, French and German. Price: € 29.99

Press contact
Konstantin Wenzel, tel. +49 511 7012016, presse@kestnergesellschaft.de

Press preview wednesday, 23 november 2011, 11 am
Opening on thursday, 24 november 2011, 7 pm the artist will be present

kestnergesellschaft
Goseriede 11 - 30159 Hanover, Germany
Tuesday–Sunday and on holidays 11 am–6 pm
Thursday 11 am–8 pm
Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve 11 am – 2 pm
Mondays closed
Entrance fee:
single ticket 7 Euro
reduced single ticket 5 Euro
ticket for opening 10 Euro
free admission for members and children younger than 15

stampa

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