Alex Katz

Salzburg

American artist Alex Katz has split his time between Maine and New York City for many decades. His special connection to Maine dates back to the year 1949 which marked a turning point in the career of the young artist Alex Katz. After graduating from art school in New York, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of that year. His time at Skowhegan would prove to play a pivotal role in his future career. In New York, where his studies had focused on the shapes and techniques of the international avantgarde, Katz was fascinated by the large-scale formats and openness of Abstract Expressionism, which had just become established by its most prominent representative Jackson Pollock. The pathos and macho-like demeanour of Abstract Expressionism were incompatible with Katz’s idea of style. At the same time he was impressed by Cool Jazz with its distanced elegance and cool efficiency. In New York, Katz was intuitively attracted to those elements which suited his character and his artistic ideas; in Maine he learned to connect these elements. At Skowhegan he was prompted to go out into the countryside and paint what he saw. Working with nature and light in a quick and immediate manner was a liberating experience for Katz and helped him develop as an artist. He was able to bring together the pace, seriousness and energy he had adopted from Abstract Expressionism with his already very clear ideas of contemporary figurative painting, whose immediate presence was supposed to resemble jazz.

Being a typical New York artist, Katz spends the summer months in the countryside, in Lincolnville, Maine, where he bought a home and studio in 1954. Thus, his subject matter varies widely, oscillating between the two poles „New York“ and „Maine“: from the cityscapes of the Big Apple to picturesque landscapes, from the metropolitan interiors of Manhattan to people doing leisure activities.

Alex Katz

Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg

March 9 – July 7, 2013
Mönchsberg 32
5020 Salzburg
Austria

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