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7/10/2003

Alex Katz

Pace Wildenstein, New York

Flowers and Landscapes

Flowers and Landscapes, an exhibition of new paintings by Alex Katz will be on view from October 8 through November 8, 2003 at PaceWildenstein, 32 East 57th Street, New York. The exhibition features sixteen large-scale works painted between 2001 and 2002 that present unusual perspectives on nature subjects ranging from marigolds, magnolias, and roses to birches, woods in twilight, and a country road. While Katz is primarily known for his portraiture, nature is a subject the artist has painted consistently since the early 1950s. In Flowers and Landscapes, Katz explores up-close the volumes and colors created by natural light.

"Nature, in Katz's work, serves not as an allegory of order or chaos, or as a surrogate for the artist's creative impulse but rather as a rapidly changing set of spaces and lights, shifting environments that surround us," writes Vincent Katz in the accompanying exhibition catalogue essay.

Alex Katz first painted outdoors in Maine in 1949 while studying at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The spontaneity and directness of working from nature made an early impact on the artist, as did Jackson Pollock's use of space, which inspired Katz's early all-over paintings of trees. Katz, who has spent summers in Maine from 1954 to the present, has used landscape in various ways: as a primary subject, as background in figurative painting, and in a kind of picture he terms 'environmental,' in which no horizon line is readily identifiable, and the viewer feels enveloped by the natural setting. Katz embarked on these environmental paintings following his 1986 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, first in a series of night-time cityscapes and since then, in a variety of urban and country settings.

Alex Katz's work has been the subject of nearly 200 solo exhibitions internationally since 1954. This summer the first European exhibition devoted solely to the artist's celebrated portraits opened at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. An exhibition of the artist's aluminum cut-outs which opened at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg earlier this year is currently on view at the Museum Moderner Kunst Karnten, Klagenfurt, Austria through October 26, 2003.

Major exhibitions of Katz's landscape and portrait painting in America and Europe followed his 1986 Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective and 1988 print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. These exhibitions include: Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1995), Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia (1996), P.S. 1/Institute for Contemporary Art, New York (1997-1998), the Saatchi Gallery, London (1998), Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento (1999), and Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deustchland, Bonn (2002).

For the past three years Alex Katz: Small Paintings has traveled to five American venues including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York before closing this Spring at the Austin Museum of Art.

Alex Katz (b. 1927) studied at The Cooper Union in New York and at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1994, The Cooper Union endowed the Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting, and in 2000, honored the artist with its 'Artist of the City' award. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Art of Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, presents exhibitions of its in-depth collection of Katz's paintings, cut-outs, drawings, and prints.

Alex Katz's work can be found in numerous public collections worldwide. Those in America include: Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Brooklyn Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Des Moines Art Center; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Milwaukee Art Museum; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

For further information on Alex Katz: Flowers and Landscapes, including images, please refer to the website or contact Sarah Kurz at 212-421-3292

Image: Alex Katz
Birches
2002
oil on canvas
10' 6-1/8" x 8' 1/8" (320.4 cm x 244.2 cm)

Pace Wildenstein
32 East 57th Street 2nd floor
New York
Telephone:1.212.421.3292
Fax: 1.212.421.0835

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