Alex Katz
Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, England
January 15, 2020 - February 22, 2020
Pristine, flat surfaces and an economy of line are emblematic of Alex Katz's celebrated portraits and landscapes, which the artist began in the 1950s. Katz’s minimal aesthetic was, at this time, both a reaction to Abstract Expressionism and an anticipation of Pop Art. In addition to his painting practice, Katz is a prolific printmaker who continues to explore three-dimensional space with sculptural cutouts, a technique first established by the artist in 1959.
The subject of over 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group shows internationally since 1951, Katz has been honoured with numerous retrospectives including: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Colby College Museum of Art, Maine; Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden; Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; The Saatchi Gallery, London; Tate St. Ives, UK; Turner Contemporary, UK; Albertina Museum, Vienna; and The Guggenheim, Bilbao.
Katz is represented in over 100 public collections worldwide, and throughout his career has been the recipient of numerous awards: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Painting in 1972, and in 1987, the Pratt Institute’s Mary Buckley Award for Achievement and The Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement. Katz was inducted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988, and recognised with honorary doctorates by Colby College, Maine in 1984 and Colgate University, Hamilton, New York in 2005. In 2007, he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum, New York.
Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. After graduating from the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan in 1949, he was awarded a scholarship by the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1968, Katz moved into an artists’ cooperative building in SoHo, New York, where he has lived and worked ever since, spending his summers in Lincolnville, Maine.