Alex Katz has been recognized as one of the most outstanding painters of our time, a “father” of the new figurative art. Museums and galleries in the US and European countries keep his works in their permanent collections, while personal exhibitions of the artist are held in various cities worldwide several times a year. The exhibition of Alex Katz at the Stella Art venue contains paintings from the author’s personal collection representing his earlier oeuvre as well as the current period of his work.
In the first half of the 1950s, the hey day of abstract expressionism, Alex Katz established himself as an artists with a characteristic realistic style that anticipated the Pop Art of the 1960s, and yet was radically different from it. “Pop Art deals with signs, whereas I deal with symbols. Pop Art is cynical and ironical, while my works are nothing but. Pop Art has exclusively been born by modernity, while my art capitalizes upon many centuries of the painting tradition”, — says Alex Katz.
Sharp contour, pure and flat color, stylized form and the combination of abstract and realistic elements in Kats’ paintings transport the viewer into a world of imagery at the boundaries between reality and art.
The Foundation has published an illustrated catalogue of the exhibition with essays by Achille Bonito Oliva and Kay Heymer.
