CHICAGO, IL (AAPNW) – Going on view, Friday, October 22, 2021 at the Gray Chicago, a new series of eleven large-scale portraits by Alex Katz in his solo exhibition, “The White Coat” are works created between 2020-2021 based on the likeness of Vivien Bittencourt, a photographer and filmmaker, and the artist’s daughter-in-law.
Across these eleven portraits, Vivien retains an air of mystery in each canvas, turning towards and away from the viewer in a state of perpetual motion as artist Katz paints Vivien in a variety of dynamic compositions unified by a brilliant light blue ground color.
With a discerning eye for color, form and economy of line, Katz upholds the immediacy of portraiture while balancing the specific and abstract, intimate and remote, geometric and gestural.
Writer and curator Jan Verwoert wrote in the accompanying publication, “Vivien looks you in the eye and stands firmly. But still she will not stand for long. The folds and ripples in the white coat she wears give clues to the fact that she may prefer to stay in motion. As do the freely interlacing patterns of black lines on the blouse she put on under the coat. Vivien looks around, turns, and is on her way.”
For more information, see www.richardandgraygallery.com. The exhibit will remain on view through December 17, 2021
About
Alex Katz (American, b.1927) is one of the most recognized and widely-exhibited artists of his generation. Often associated with the Pop Art movement, Katz began exhibiting his work in 1954, and since that time he has produced a celebrated body of work that includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints.
His earliest work took inspiration from various aspects of mid-century American culture and society, including television, film, and advertising. Known for creating large works, with a bold simplicity and heightened color palette, Katz created “a new and distinctive type of realism in American art which combines aspects of both abstraction and representation,” said Art Historian Robert Starr.
Since the 1950s, Katz’s work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions around the world. His work can be found in nearly 100 public collections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others.