Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/518559
168 CULTURED White Roses 9, 2012, at the High Museum of Art; the artist, above self, as well as an affinity for the surrounding area. He eventually purchased a house in Lincolnville. Katz wanted to make a realistic painting look new. That was the idea behind the early canvases he produced. And while he struggled to find his oeuvre, the 1950s proved to be a fertile decade with many firsts for the artist, including painting from photographs and finding inspiration in the collages of Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko's color and Franz Kline's graphic brush strokes. And while Katz experimented with multiple art-making techniques, he at least knew his paintings weren't conventional. In 1957, Katz's introduction to Ada—who became his muse and ultimately, his wife—resulted in several portraits which are featured in the upcoming Colby show. While disinterested in portraiture that conveyed psychological or political overtones, Katz was engaged in creating a more impersonal style that was of a particular person, at a particular time, in an abstract form, with faces and forms on chromatic backgrounds. "At the heart, Alex has always been a painter's painter," says Tuite. The Colby exhibition is a homecoming of sorts and marks the first time Katz's work from the 1950s will be assembled in an exhibition of more than 60 paintings, collages and cutouts on loan to the museum or drawn from its deep collection. Colby is home to nearly 900 works by the artist, many of which were gifted to Colby by Katz's foundation. "I think what's so exciting about this early work, while totally unrecognizable as work by Katz, is it's so foundational," says Tuite. While Katz's early career will be commemorated in Maine, one-third of the exhibition "Alex Katz, This Is Now" at the High Museum of Art, will include works completed in the last decade, as well as 15 landscape paintings that will be exhibited together for the first time. In May, a solo show of recent landscapes debuted at Gavin Brown's West Village space. "They're a natural landscape as opposed to a rural landscape," says Brown. "The paintings don't specifically reference Maine. They're less preoccupied with the depiction of something actual," he says. Larger in scale, this work also highlights Katz's loose brushstroke in a particular way. "There's a distinct lack of sentiment," says Brown, adding, "There's nothing romantic about these landscapes. They definitely have a sense of the profound about them." As for Katz's recent output, the artist's savvy dealer says, "I think his journey has been a very internal one, with his relationship with his painting, his brush and with his marks. We're witness to that. Other artists are involved in a more open conversation. He has deliberately chosen a narrow path in which to explore painting in an infinite way." "There's nothing romantic about these landscapes. They definitely have a sense of the profound about them." —Gavin Brown