Edited by Klaus Albrecht Schröder. Text by Felix Zdenek, Marietta Mautner Markhof, Werner Spies.
Alex Katz (born 1927) is best known as a painter--specifically, as a painter of his family and his distinguished circle of friends, including poets, writers and artists. In the early 1950s, he began experimenting with printmaking, but it was not until the mid 1960s that he intensified his interest and production in the medium. Pushing at the limits of various printing techniques, Katz tested out pictorial ideas first conceived for his paintings, retaining planes of matte color but further simplifying his forms and dramatically cropping his images. These reduced compositions were wonderfully compatible with the graphic clarity of printmaking, and by effectively translating his paintings into prints, the artist achieved what he called the "final synthesis of painting." This publication provides insight into an often-neglected yet vital aspect of Katz's work, from the early 1950s to the present day.
"Here, the silent yet exciting moments between sunset and darkness are staged as a monumental, natural drama through the most minimal shifts in coloration behind a vegetation that stays the same, that is, remains unmoved. The aforementioned combination linked to Katz's early training, of a knowledge mastered both formally and as craft, of modernism's process of reduction and an almost naīve, fundamentally impressionist gaze, comes through in all these examples as the fundamental element beneath the styled surfaces of his work"
Marietta Mautner Markhof, excerpted from Beyond the Surface in Alex Katz: Prints. Featured image also from Alex Katz: Prints.
"Alex Katz's screenprints and lithographs are distinguished by a clear, formal language, restricted to the elementary and smooth surfaces that male the technical process of printing almost impossible to determine; a few of his woodcuts reveal, by contrast, that the artist is not averse to affording the material of the printing blocks a creative function. A certain 'roughness' of contours and edges as well as the traces left by chisel and burin are accepted by Katz, not only as refinements for connoisseurs as he himself soon came to know and appreciate the craftsmanship involved, he very much welcomes a certain emotionalism in the creation of his woodcuts. Even though he works with professional printers, he is capable of executing most of the graphic processes himself that is the one side of his art, the traditional side the other side, in every respect the more radical stems from Katz's persistently defended claim that he is a contemporary 'modern' artist. A claim he actually lives up to in his painting and in his graphic to shape this image, as it were, he creates a visual, 'symbolic' typology of the present, and bears witness to the current atmosphere of the time while still maintaining distance from it. If we apply Charles Baudelaire's classical definition to his art, then Katz remains the true 'painter of modern life'--cool, distanced, keenly observing and, nevertheless, entirely effective in his own way vis-ā-vis the subject."
Zdenek Felix, excerpted from Style and Elegance in Alex Katz: Prints.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 12 in. / 240 pgs / 203 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $70 ISBN: 9783775725859 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 11/30/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Klaus Albrecht Schröder. Text by Felix Zdenek, Marietta Mautner Markhof, Werner Spies.
Alex Katz (born 1927) is best known as a painter--specifically, as a painter of his family and his distinguished circle of friends, including poets, writers and artists. In the early 1950s, he began experimenting with printmaking, but it was not until the mid 1960s that he intensified his interest and production in the medium. Pushing at the limits of various printing techniques, Katz tested out pictorial ideas first conceived for his paintings, retaining planes of matte color but further simplifying his forms and dramatically cropping his images. These reduced compositions were wonderfully compatible with the graphic clarity of printmaking, and by effectively translating his paintings into prints, the artist achieved what he called the "final synthesis of painting." This publication provides insight into an often-neglected yet vital aspect of Katz's work, from the early 1950s to the present day.
