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The Gallery at Windsor presents Alex Katz ~ Seeing, Drawing, Making

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Written by Lawrence A. Thomas   
Saturday, 16 January 2010 02:51

Alex Katz depicts his wife, Ada, in ‘‘The Black Dress’’ (1960) - © Alex Katz / Licensed by Vaga, NY 

VERO BEACH, FL - The Gallery at Windsor is pleased to present Alex Katz: Seeing, Drawing, Making from December 7, 2008 – April 20, 2009 in Vero Beach, Florida. Founded in 2002, The Gallery at Windsor is an independent art space located in the heart of the Windsor community. It invites curators to respond to the space with exhibitions that reflect the Windsor environment. This year, The Gallery has chosen Alex Katz, a leading American artist who has defined possibilities in figurative art since the 1950s, exerting significant influence upon generations of younger artists.

Alex Katz Self Portrait, 1990 oil on layers of wood 59.5 x 45 in.Organized by Dr. David Moos, the Curator of The Art Gallery of Ontario, Alex Katz: Seeing, Drawing, Making features a prominent selection of forty seven figurative and landscape works surveying how Katz conceives of an image, and subsequently elaborates it across diverse media. The exhibition encompasses a selection of prints, drawings and oil paintings both on board and canvas. The wide-ranging exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Drawing is central to Katz’s process of image formation: Seeing, Drawing, Making allows visitors to witness how he develops specific images, beginning with intuitive sketches, continuing with pencil drawings and large-format charcoal cartoons, and concluding with completed canvases. Katz’s collaboration with the choreographer Paul Taylor reveals how the artist draws upon dance as a source inspiration, leading to innovative poses and bodily movements which ultimately lead to completed paintings. A series of works from the mid-1980s titled Last Look, after the Taylor dance work, evidences Katz’s precise yet nuanced approach.

The Gallery at Windsor is home to important works from the Weston Collection. Recent Shows at The Gallery at Windsor include: Peter Doig, Works on Paper; Heel to Heal: The Collection of Animal Paintings, Drawings and Photographs of Bruce Weber and Nan Bush; Ed Ruscha, The Drawn Word; The Beach: An Exhibition of Photography in 2002; Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Weston Collection in 2002; and The Family: An Exhibition of Photography in 2003.

Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. He studied at The Cooper Union in New York from 1946 to 1947 and from 1949 to 1950 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. His first one-person exhibition was in 1954 at the Roko Gallery in New York. In 1974 The Whitney Museum of American Art showed Alex Katz Prints, followed by a traveling retrospective exhibition Alex Katz in 1986. Katz’s works are included in most major museum collections throughout North America and Europe.

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