Alex Katz, Double White Band(Vivien), 2013; Oil on linen, 182.9x335.3cm

Timothy Taylor announces the first grand solo exhibition of Alex Katz's work in mainland China to be unveiled on November 7 in Shanghai. Alex Katz (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1927) has been a defining, preeminent and influential artist for the past fifty years. Graduating in 1949 from The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan he was then awarded a scholarship to the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he studied plein air painting, and which the artist soon realized, as Katz commented, “helped me separate myself from European painting and find my own eyes.” Katz had his first one-person exhibition in New York City in 1954.

Since the early 1960s, emerging in New York at the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism but before the advent of Pop Art, Katz established a singular position for himself and his paintings by working rigorously and independently of these movements, remaining steadfast to figuration and to the landscape. Best known for his portraits of charismatic, stylish women painted with a crisp, methodical precision and bold areas of color, Katz has also painted men, many of whom are fellow artists, dancers, poets and writers from the New York literary world. Groups of people in social gatherings, the landscape and water of Maine, where the artist has spent his summers for many years, in addition to the urban cityscape of Manhattan at night have played a prominent role in Katz’s paintings. Throughout his career Katz has also portrayed his family, his son Vincent, and the artist’s wife and lifelong muse, Ada, who was the subject of a major exhibition, Alex Katz Paints Ada at The Jewish Museum, New York (2006-2007).

Alex Katz, Christy, 2015; Oil on linen, 121.9x243.8cm

Katz's work has been included numerous group and solo exhibitions internationally since 1951. Several major exhibitions of Katz's landscape and portrait painting in America and Europe followed his 1986 Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective and his 1988 print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, presents ongoing exhibitions of Katz’s paintings, cut-outs, drawings, and prints. It is one of the few museums in the United States devoted solely to the work of a single living artist.

Museum collections worldwide include The Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions include the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was inducted by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988 and has received many honors and awards throughout is career.

Alex Katz, White Roses 9, 2012; Oil on linen, 274.3x548.6cm

About the exhibition

Dates: November 7 –13, 2016

Venue: Building 2, West Bund Art & Culture Pilot Zone, 2555-2 Longteng Avenue, West Bund, Shanghai

Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor.