Alex Katz
Ariel
2016

Name: Ariel
Brand: Alex Katz
Price: 33750 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

TECHNICAL INFORMATION: Alex Katz Ariel (set of 3) 2016 Baked archival UV inks on shaped powder-coated aluminum 60 x 28 in. (overall dimensions) Edition of 40 Engraved signed and numbered on the back of center cut out Accompanied with COA by Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art. Condition: This set is brand new. It comes in its own packaging, opened just once for inspection purposes. It comes with box, book and gloves directly from the studio. ABOUT THE 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. This is the case of Ariel. Ariel is a three piece aluminum cut out set, created after a painting and a screenprint that he did in 2016 of the same name, that depicts a woman in three different perspectives in a sequence. This idea, the theme of variation, is very important to the artist. According to Katz, he was the first artist to start using the technique of repetition in his works, before the other artists of the time. He even says that Warhol took this concept from him. His studies on repetition start with a work called Ada Ada, which is one of his earliest work, and continue until today with this Ariel. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Alex Katz is an American painter of portraits and landscapes. He started working on these themes during years dominated by non-figurative art, which he always strongly avoided. Living in New York City, since the 1950s Katz spends his summers in Maine, which has been his source of inspiration for many of his famous landscapes. As for his portraits, the people he depicts are colleagues that surrounded him during his career, members of his family, friends or neighbors. Alex Katz's portraits are always very recognizable. They are all characterized by an unmistakable flatness and lack of detail. To represent a shadow or light, he uses slight variations of colors. Many times, monochrome backgrounds represent another defining characteristic of his style. These portraits do not own a clear narrative - it is not important for the viewer to know the person or the story behind the artwork. What Katz tries to emphasize is actually the beauty of the subjects. The use of gentle colors and the emphasis of fashion details in his paintings turn the coldness of the sharp lines, lack of detail and flatness into an artwork warm for the viewer to enjoy. Having achieved widespread critical acclaim and commercial success, he serves as an influence to younger figurative artists such as Elizabeth Peyton and Julian Opie. While his work precedes the Pop Art movement, his engagement with the mid-century culture of television and advertising warrants the association. The genius of Alex Katz's style is derived directly from one of Katz's biggest influences, the Master Japanese woodblock artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 - 1806), the master of Japanese woodblock color printing. Utamaro's woodcuts are in the Ukiyo-e tradition, which means pictures of the floating world and represent everyday life scenes, capturing a specific person or a particular moment. Utamaro is one of the most highly regarded practitioners of genre of woodblock prints, especially for his portraits of beautiful women. His Japanese aesthetic is typically flat and bi-dimensional. He influenced Katz particularly with his use of partial views and his emphasis on light and shade. Alex Katz's works can be found in over 100 public collections worldwide. Major exhibitions of Katz's landscape and portrait painting in America and Europe followed his 1986 Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective and 1988 print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He continues to spend his summers in Lincolnville, Maine.

Creator:

Alex Katz (1927, American)

Creation Year:

2016

Dimensions:

Height: 38 in (96.52 cm)Width: 29 in (73.66 cm)Depth: 9 in (22.86 cm)

More Editions & Sizes:

Edition of 40Price: $33,750

Medium:

Aluminum,Cut Steel

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-

Condition:

This work is in impeccable condition. It comes in its own packaging, opened just once for inspection purposes. It comes with box, book and gloves directly from the publisher.

Gallery Location:

Miami, FL

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU53831682633

View Invoice

Shop All Alex Katz

Alex Katz

Flat color and minimal forms contrast the often monumental scales of the paintings by Alex Katz through which he creates portraits and landscapes of deceptive simplicity. Although the signature stark style that defines his prints and other work is now recognizable at a glance, it took him a decade to develop. During that time, he has said he destroyed hundreds of paintings.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian émigré parents, Katz’s family moved to Queens when he was a baby and that is where his family’s passion for the arts supported his early creative interests. In 1946, he enrolled at the Cooper Union in Manhattan where he studied painting under Morris Kantor. While he was influenced by the bold colors and hard edges of modernism, he shifted away from the then-dominant Abstract Expressionism movement to figurative scenes of life that have an inherent cool in their pared-down approach. Especially impactful were Katz’s summer studies between 1949 and 1950 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, a place where, as he later wrote: “I tried plein air painting and found my subject matter and a reason to devote my life to painting.”

Katz’s first solo show was in 1954 at Roko Gallery in New York. He experimented over the course of the following years with collage and painting on aluminum sheets, with his work in the 1960s drawing inspiration from film and advertising. In the 1970s, Katz expanded into portrait groups that regularly depicted the cultural scene of New York; in the 1980s, he extended his focus to fashion and its supermodels. Since the late 1950s, an enduring muse for his portraits has been his wife, Ada, while others have painted friends and famous figures. The intimate closeness of the frequently cropped faces in Katz’s portraits exudes a sense of tension with the subjects’ enigmatic expressions and planes of color.

In the 1960s, Katz collaborated with American dancer and choreographer Paul Taylor on sets and costumes. His concentration on landscapes emerged in the late 1980s, with atmospheric night views joining his practice, which had previously been defined by bright colors. Always finding new perspectives on his work, he has explored using iPhone photographs as the basis for large-scale compositions in recent years.

Katz’s prolific career has spanned sculpture, prints and public art along with his paintings and drawings, and his works can be found in the collections of leading museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art. He has had over 250 solo exhibitions around the world and continues to be acclaimed. In 2022, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum plans to open a major retrospective of his art.

Find Alex Katz art today on 1stDibs.