Alex Katz - Biography

Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.

Life and work

Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1928 the family moved to St. Albans, Queens. From 1946 to 1949 he studied at The Cooper Union in New York, and from 1949 to 1950 he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Skowhegan exposed him to painting from life, which would prove pivotal in his development as a painter and remains a staple of his practices today. Katz explains that Skowhegan’s plein air painting gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.” Katz has admitted to destroying a thousand paintings during his first ten years as a painter in order to find his style. Since the 1950s, he worked to create art more freely in the sense that he tried to paint “faster than [he] can think.” His works seem simple, but according to Katz they are more reductive, which is fitting to his personality.

Ada Katz, whom he married in 1958, has been the subject of numerous portraits throughout his career. In 1960, Katz had his first (and only) son, Vincent Katz. A summer resident of Lincolnville, Maine since 1954, he has developed a close relationship with local Colby College. The college presented him with an honorary doctorate in 1984 and in October 1996, the Colby College Museum of Art opened a wing dedicated to Katz that features more than 400 oil paintings, collages, and prints donated by the artist.

His first one-person show came in 1954: an exhibition of paintings at the Roko Gallery in New York. In the early 1960s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces. In 1965, he also embarked on a prolific career in printmaking. Katz would go on to produce many editions in lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodcut and linoleum cut, producing over 400 print editions in his lifetime. The Albertina, Vienna, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hold complete collections of Katz print oeuvre. A print catalogue raisonné is due for release by the Albertina in the fall of 2011.

Beginning in the late 1950s, Katz developed a technique of painting on cut panels, first of wood, then aluminum, calling them "cutouts". These works would occupy space like sculptures, but their physicality is compressed into planes, as with paintings.

After 1964, Katz increasingly portrayed groups of figures. He would continue painting these complex groups into the 1970s, portraying the social world of painters, poets, critics, and other colleagues that surrounded him. He began designing sets and costumes for choreographer Paul Taylor in the early 1960s, and he has painted many images of dancers throughout the years. In 1974 The Whitney Museum of American Art showed Alex Katz Prints, followed by a traveling retrospective exhibition of paintings and cutouts titled Alex Katz in 1986. After the Whitney exhibition, Katz focused on landscapes stating "I wanted to make an environmental landscape, where you were IN it." In the late 1980s, Katz took on a new subject in his work: fashion models in designer clothing, including Kate Moss and Christy Turlington. "I've always been interested in fashion because it's ephemeral," he said.

Katz has collaborated with poets and writers since the 1960s, producing several notable editions such as "Face of the Poet" combining his images with poetry from his circle, such as Ted Berrigan, Ann Lauterbach, Carter Ratcliff, and Gerard Malanga. He has worked with the poet John Ashbery, creating publications entitled "Fragment" in 1966 and "Coma Berenices". in 2005. He has worked with Vincent Katz on "A Tremor in the Morning" and "Swimming Home". Katz also made 25 etchings for the Arion Press edition of Gloria with 28 poems by Bill Berkson. Other collaborators include Robert Creely, with whom he produced "Edges" and "Legeia: A Libretto". and Kenneth Koch, producing "Interlocking Lives".

Katz has received numerous accolades throughout his career. In 2007, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum, New York. In 2005, Katz was the honored artist at the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Inaugural Richard Gray Annual Visual Arts Series. The same year, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Colgate University, Hamilton, New York— his second Honorary Doctorate, following one from Colby College, Maine, in 1984. Katz was named the Philip Morris Distinguished Artist at the American Academy in Berlin in 2001 and received the Cooper Union Annual Artist of the City Award in 2000. In addition to this honor, in 1994 Cooper Union Art School created the Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting with an endowment provided by the sale of ten paintings donated by the artist. Katz was inducted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988. In 1987 he was the recipient of the Pratt Institute’s Mary Buckley Award for achievement and also received the Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement. The Chicago Bar Association honored Katz with the Award for Art in Public Places in 1985. In 1978, Katz received the U.S. Government grant to participate in an educational and cultural exchange with the USSR. Katz was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting in 1972.

Numerous publications outline Katz's career's many facets: from Alex Katz in Maine published by the Farnsworth Art Museum to the catalogue Alex Katz New York, published by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Alex Katz Seeing Drawing, Making, published in 2008, describes Katz's multiple stage process of first producing charcoal drawings, small oil studies, and large cartoons for placing the image on the canvas and the final painting of the canvas. Phaidon Press (2005) published an illustrated survey, Alex Katz by Carter Ratcliff, Robert Storr and Iwona Blazwick. In 1989, a special edition of Parkett was devoted to Katz, showing that he is now considered a major reference for younger painters and artists. Over the years, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Liam Gillick, Peter Halley, David Salle and Richard Prince have written essays about his work or conducted interviews with him.

In 1996, Vincent Katz and Vivien Bittencourt produced a video titled Alex Katz: Five Hours, documenting the production of his painting January 3. and in 2008 he was the subject of a documentary directed by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, entitled What About Style? Alex Katz: a Painter's Painter.

Notes and references

Bibliography

• Klaus Albrecht Schröde,ALEX KATZ: PRINTS, Hatje Cantz, 2010, ISBN 9783775725859
• Roland Mönig, Guy Tosatto, Timo Valjakka, Eric de Chassey, ALEX KATZ: AN AMERICAN WAY OF SEEING, 2010, ISBN 9783866782631
• David A. Moos, ALEX KATZ: SEEING, DRAWING, MAKING, Windsor Press, 2008, ISBN 9780974611648
• Luca Cerizza, ALEX KATZ: FACES AND NAMES, JRP|Ringier, 2008, ISBN 9783905770797
• Enrique Juncosa, Juan Manuel Bonet, Rachael Thomas, ALEX KATZ: NEW YORK, Charta / Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2007, ISBN 9788881586349
• Barry Schwabsky,ALEX KATZ: THE SIXTIES,Charta, 2006, ISBN 9788881585939
• David Cohen, Sharon Corwin, ALEX KATZ: COLLAGES, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, ISBN 9780972848459

External links

• Alex Katz interviewed by Richard Prince
• Alex Katz Collection at the Colby College Museum of Art
• Biography on Magical-Secrets.com
• Artist Alex Katz Featured in J.Crew Catalog
• "Ada with Sunglasses" tapestry by Alex Katz