ART CITIES:Paris-Alex Katz
Alex Katz long before the protagonists of Pop Art, such as Andy Warhol, adopted the principle of serialism, and influenced an entire generation with it.. He began exhibiting his work in 1954, and since that time he has produced a body of work that includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Archive
Alex Katz’s solo Exhibition “New Landscapes” at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris presents his most recent series. It features around 20 sketches of landscapes and several monumental paintings around the same theme. Well-known for his female portraits, landscapes, as well as outdoor and night scenes, the artist always paints with simplicity, creating clearly outlined forms. The atmosphere of his paintings is rooted in the particularity of his style, at once rigorous, modernist, and refined, suggesting a both radical and simple realism. The clear forms, and vibrant, monochrome coats of paint represent the essential elements of his style. Always painting in natural light, Katz’ is concerned with the subject of visual perception. In this way, he translates classic genres, such as portraiture, landscape and outdoor painting into a contemporary figurative style. The landscapes exhibited in the gallery represent the fragile branch of a tree, the clearing on the edge of a forest, a house surrounded by nature. Regardless of the subject, Alex Katz paints with an economy of lines, simplifying form to convey an idea of painting based on the Essential. The different elements are part of a single plane, almost entirely losing any notion of depth. A brushstroke suggests the silhouette of a branch, a touch of paint transforms into a leaf, two lines recall the shape of a window – Alex Katz develops a refined, allegorical style. The majority of landscapes were realized in Maine, USA. To the artist, the light of this particular region is richer and darker than the one evoked by the Impressionists.
Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, – 7 rue Debelleyme, Paris, Duration: 5-30/7/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, http://ropac.net
