The Guggenheim Museum in New York is currently exhibiting Alex Katz: Gathering, a major retrospective of contemporary American artist Alex Katz, from October 21, 2022 to February 20, 2023.
Alex Katz who is 95 years old this year was born to a Russian immigrant family in Brooklyn in 1927. After 80 years of making art, he has committed to capturing current visual experiences and transforming the flow of daily life into visual perception. As a mid-20th century artist, different from the abstract and anti-traditional artistic ethos at that time, Katz created a figurative painting model that integrated the concept of abstract expressionism with native American popular culture, explored emotions through art, and depicted the current dynamics of human figures. Katz uses geometric systems, simple contours, bright colors, and spaces without perspective to record people and landscapes, as well as artists, poets, and dancers of the period. These works are like chronicles of celebrities, and at the same time, they also record the ever changing faces of New York.
Portraits are Katz's most well-known series; In his 1950s paintings, which contain portraits of many friends and wives around him, his wife Ada is the most common subject and records her appearance from young to old. Ada was a preeminent researcher and the couple met in 1957 and married in 1958. It was also around that time that Katz began to focus on portraiture. Katz portrays his wife from young to old, recording the state of each period. In his paintings, Ada is always quiet, introspective, and fashionable, but also with a hint of confusion and unpredictability. These qualities are also reflected in Katz's numerous portraits of women. For Katz, the most important element in his works is the way he paints. Simple, clear techniques and composition allows for the images to portray the way he sees the world. In his works, all the details are dulled, except for the important details.
Alex Katz’s unique painting style and geometric figurative paintings seem to respond to the “constitutionalism” of the avant-garde movement of modern painting, which brought a huge shock to the period when abstraction was mainstream. In his creative career, Katz constantly experiments new ways of creating. In 1959, he created “Cutouts”, which cut out the figures drawn on the plane, like sculptures. Continuing Katz’s style, life-size works are integrated into daily life, as if they are real figures. He is known as the pioneer of pop style due to the bold and distinctive colors and minimalist style found in his works.
In this retrospective exhibition Alex Katz: Gathering, Katz uses themes of personal life and family to correspond to each other. Through the context, it also shows the advancement of history and development of culture. There are as many as 154 works on display, including sketches, paintings, collages, prints and “Cutout” paper-cut works. Starting from the artist’s sketches of subway passengers in New York in the late 1940s, the exhibition displays works up to Katz’s most recent years. Katz, who is currently 95 years old, continues to create. His recent work “Yellow Tree” (Yellow Tree 1) presents autumn leaves in vibrant gold and yellow, and the artist continues to record the surrounding environment of central New York and the coast of Maine in unique ways.
Alex Katz Retrospective Gathering
Guggenheim Museum, New York
2022.10.21-2023.02.20
Photo 1：Alex Katz, Blue Umbrella 2, 1972. Oil on linen, 96 × 144 inches (243.8 × 365.8 cm). Private collection, New York. © 2022 Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Courtesy private collection.
Photo 2：Alex Katz Paul Taylor Dance Company1963 - 1964 Oil on linen. Udo and Anette Brandhorst Collection © Alex Katz
Photo 2 left bottom：Alex KatzThe Red Smile 1963 Oil on linen. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee © Alex Katz studio
Photo 2 middle of bottom：Alex Katz Blue Flag 4, 1967 Oil on linen © Alex Katz studio
Photo 2 bottom right：Alex Katz Ada Ada1959 Oil on linen. Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Golden, 1963 © Alex Katz studio
