Landscapes:
Selected Prints From the
1960s and 1970s
April 19 – May 25, 2001
 

Since 1965, when he began to make prints in his mature style, Alex Katz has created over two hundred printed images.  Initially inspired by the prints of Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, Katz viewed printmaking as a tool for clarifying and expanding images from his paintings and collages of the 1950s and 1960s.

This exhibition focuses on the first decade of Katz’s exploration of screenprint and lithography-- media well suited to creating the flatness of form achieved in his paintings and collages of the period.  Common to the landscape images, despite their reductive detail and generalized shapes, is a specificity of time and place.  In prints such as Swamp Maple I, 1970 and Late July I, 1971, Katz evokes the subdued light and atmosphere of an overcast sky by using “low-chroma” inks closely related in tone and value. In contrast, Blueberry Field, based on a collage from the late 1950s, recreates the brilliant sunshine of a summer day by juxtaposing unmodulated primary colors.

These early prints, intimate in scale and deceptively simple, illustrate Katz’s considerable achievement in fusing elements of abstraction and realism.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 6 pm; Saturday 11am to 6 pm.  For further information, please call 212-213-6767.