LONDON.- The Serpentine presents the work of renowned American painter Alex Katz (b. 1927, Brooklyn, New York). Coming of age as an artist in 1950s New York, Katz developed his unique approach to contemporary representational painting during the height of Abstract Expressionism.
Over the five and a half decades since his first exhibition in 1954, Katz has produced a celebrated body of work, including paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints. Establishing himself as a pre-eminent painter of modern life, he was influenced by films, billboard advertising, music, poetry and his close circle of friends and family. His portraits and landscapes are characterised by their flatness of colour and fluidity of line, reinventing both genres within the context of abstract painting and contemporary image-making.
The Serpentine exhibition takes landscape as its focus, bringing together Katz’s extraordinarily productive output of recent years alongside select works from the past two decades. Katz’s landscape paintings exemplify his life-long quest to capture the present tense in paint. Regardless of their scale, Katz describes these paintings as ‘environmental’ in the way in which they envelop the viewer. Defined by temporal qualities of light, times of the day and the changing of the seasons, these paintings respond and relate to the unique context of the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. The exhibition also includes a recent series of portraits.
Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries, said: “We are thrilled to be presenting Alex Katz at the Serpentine Gallery this summer and to introduce his extraordinary landscape paintings to a new audience in such a fitting setting during our summer season. Katz’s investigations into perceptions of scale and the effects of light have produced a distinctive body of images that continue to influence generations of artists.”
Katz draws parallels between his approach to painting and his interest in poetry, both equally concerned with stripping away unnecessary detail to leave only the essential information. This relationship between language and the painting process is echoed in the work of painter, poet and filmmaker Etel Adnan, showing in parallel at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, whose landscapes are similarly defined by their bold colour and simplified form that is nevertheless rooted in keen observation of the world around her.
Alex Katz (b. 1927, New York) lives and works in New York and Maine. He graduated from the Cooper Union School of Art, New York in 1949 and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine in 1950. Selected solo exhibitions include: The High Museum, Atlanta; Guggenheim, Bilbao (2015–6); Tate St Ives; Turner Contemporary, Margate (both 2012); The National Portrait Gallery, London (2010); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2007); Albertina, Vienna (2010); Saatchi Gallery, London (1998); P.S.1 / Institute for Contemporary Art, New York (1997-8); Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia (1996); Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1995); Brooklyn Musuem (1988); Vancouver Art Museum (1977).
