Celebrated painter Alex Katz to speak at the AFA ArtTalks series
Wednesday, April 13
American Federation of Arts
41 East 65th Street
NY, NY 10021
Please note that seating is limited and reservations are required.
Contact: Caroline Babson, Manager of Communications, 212.988.7700 ext. 64
www.afaweb.org
One of the most important American artists of the last fifty years and a pioneer of modern realism, Alex Katz will discuss his distinct style, creative process and vast body of work as part of AFA’s lecture series, ArtTalks. ArtTalks will be held on Wednesday, April 13, 2005, at 6:30 p.m. at the AFA, located at 41 East 65th Street, New York. After the talk, audience members are invited to join Mr. Katz for an intimate reception. Seating is limited and reservations are required. For reservations, please call 212.988.7700, ext. 64. ArtTalks is presented by Target Stores.
Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Alex Katz studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and the Skowhegan School of Painting in Maine before getting his first solo show in New York in 1954. Best known for his large-scale portraits and landscapes, Katz played a major role in introducing a revolutionary new form of realism to American art. Katz’s paintings fuse flat, simplified abstract forms with recognizable realist imagery to produce a style that is uniquely his own. His cropped, colorful portraits frequently depict his wife Ada, his son Vincent, and his close friends, many of whom are well-known artists, musicians, and writers.
In 1992, Mr. Katz donated more than 400 of his works to the Colby College Museum of Art which houses them in the Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz. The museum, located in Waterville, Maine presents rotating exhibitions of its in-depth collection of Katz’s paintings, cut-outs, drawings, and prints. Mr. Katz’s work can also be found in numerous public collections worldwide, including: the Art Institute of Chicago; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, which houses the largest collection of Katz’s work outside of the Colby College Museum.
Since Mr. Katz’s first solo show in 1954, he has been the subject of nearly 200 solo exhibitions internationally. In 1986, the Whitney Museum mounted a retrospective of his work that was followed shortly thereafter, in 1988, with a print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Following these major retrospectives, exhibitions of his work have been shown at art centers around the world including Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany (1995), I.V.A.M. Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain (1996), P.S. 1/Institute for Contemporary Art, New York (1997-98), the Saatchi Gallery, London (1998), and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2000), among others. Most recently, an exhibition of his cartoons and paintings could be seen at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria (2004-5). In 2005 alone, Mr. Katz is the subject of multiple solo exhibitions worldwide.
The AFA initiates and organizes art exhibitions that are presented in museums around the world. The AFA also publishes exhibition catalogues and offers educational and professional development programs for the museum community and general public. For more information, log on to our Web site at www.afaweb.org
