Visitor Information
This exhibition is now closed.
There is no admission fee to visit The Gallery at Windsor. Exhibition visitors are invited to support The Windsor Charitable Foundation with a suggested donation of $10. This gift is tax-deductible and is designated to support local arts education.
About the Exhibition
Alex Katz is a leading American artist who has defined possibilities in figurative art since the 1950’s, exerting significant influence upon generations of younger artists.
Curated by Dr. David Moos, the then Curator of The Art Gallery of Ontario, Seeing, Drawing, Making featured a prominent selection of 47 figurative and landscape works surveying how Katz conceives of an image, and subsequently elaborates it across diverse media. The exhibition encompassed a selection of prints, drawings and oil paintings on both board and canvas. The wide-ranging exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
Drawing is central to Katz’s process of image formation. Seeing, Drawing, Making allowed visitors to witness how he develops specific images, beginning with intuitive sketches, continuing with pencil drawings and large-format charcoal cartoons, and concluding with completed canvases. Katz’s collaboration with the choreographer Paul Taylor revealed how the artist draws upon dance as a source of inspiration, leading to innovative poses and bodily movements, which ultimately lead to completed paintings.
About the Artist
Alex Katz is an American painter renowned for his large-scale depictions of landscapes, flowers and portraits. Katz’s flattening of forms, simplification of detail and alla-prima paint application are trademarks of his work. Well known for his many portraits of his wife and muse, Ada, Katz has also dedicated himself to printmaking and freestanding sculptures of cutout figures painted on wood or aluminum
Born on July 24, 1927 in Brooklyn, NY, Katz attended the Cooper Union School of Art and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture as a young man. During the mid-1950’s, Katz fell into the small circle of artists known as the 10th Street Scene, which included Lois Dodd, Larry Rivers and Fairfield Porter, among others. Over the following decades, he developed his hallmark stylization through experimenting with collaged paper and aluminum cutouts. Having achieved widespread critical acclaim and commercial success, his work serves as a beacon to younger generations of artists, including Elizabeth Peyton and Julian Opie.
Katz maintains residences in Lincolnville, ME, and New York, NY. Today, his works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern in London and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., among others.
Publication
Alex Katz
Seeing, Drawing, Making
ISBN 978-0974611646, hardback, 104 pages, 8.5 x 10.5 inches, published by Windsor Press.
Overview
Featuring a selection of 80 figurative works and landscapes in a wide range of materials and media including pencil, ink, oil stick and charcoal, drawings, prints and paintings, Alex Katz: Seeing, Drawing, Making (December 7, 2008 – April 20, 2009) demonstrates how the artist explores and elaborates the same image through diverse media.
With text written by Dr. David Moos, former Curator of The Art Gallery of Ontario, the volume reveals how Katz’s repetitive method of working results in the distillation of form for which he is famous. Whether portraying a dancer at full stride or a secluded landscape seen at sunset, Katz’s iconic stylization is the result of careful preparation, beginning with intuitive sketches, continuing with pencil drawings and large-format charcoal cartoons and concluding with completed canvases.
A series of works from the mid-1980s entitled Last Look, after choreographer Paul Taylor’s eponymous piece, evidences Katz’s nuanced approach to human form and gesture. This volume offers a fascinating glimpse into the hard work that goes into making a Katz painting look effortless.