Nassau County Museum of Art will presents a solo exhibition of works by Alex Katz, one of America’s most important and honored living artists.
“Alex Katz: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art” opens on June 29 and remains on view through Oct. 13. This exhibition includes early landscapes and collages, as well as the enormous and brilliantly-colored portraits of family and friends that are a hallmark of the artist’s career. The presentation draws upon the Whitney’s extensive holdings of art by Alex Katz.
Since 1951, Katz’s work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout this country and internationally. His many honors include two honorary doctorate degrees, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum in New York, a Philip Morris Distinguished Artist Award from the American Academy in Berlin, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Artís Annual Artist of the City Award,
Katz was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and grew up in the St. Albans section of Queens. His Russian parents shared a deep interest in the arts.
At Cooper Unionís School of Art, Katz was trained in modern art theories and techniques, later earning a scholarship for study at Maineís Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. He has said that Skowheganís plein air painting gave him a reason to devote my life to painting.
In New York during the 1950s, resisting the dominant abstractionism of the time, Katz associated with other figurative painters, among them Larry Rivers and Fairfield Porter.
Toward the latter part of the decade, his work evolved towards greater realism. Katz became increasingly interested in portraiture with monochrome backgrounds, painting his friends and family and especially his wife and muse, Ada. Influenced by panoramic films and billboard advertising during the 1960s, Katz began creating large-scale paintings, often depicting dramatically cropped faces in a style that was to become his artistic signature.
The power of Katzís portraits, said Dana Miller, Curator, Permanent Collection, of the Whitney Museum of American Art, comes from their color and their scale.
Nassau County Museum of Art is offering several programs in conjunction with this solo exhibition of works by Alex Katz. “Alex Katz: What About Style?,” a 56-minute video, is screening daily at 11 a.m., 12 p.m, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
The film is free with museum admission. Also free with admission are the daily 2 p.m. exhibition tours as well as lunchtime lectures on Katzís work offered on July 25, Aug. 22 and September 26. On Oct. 12, the influential art critic Bill Berkson offers insights on Katzís painting. For details on these and other events, visit nassaumuseum.org/events.
The exhibition was organized in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
