The Javier López Gallery is pleased to present Studies by Alex Katz (New York, 1927).
Although Katz is better known for portraits of figures pertaining to his close environment, on this occasion he offers what has been another favourite genre since the beginning of his artistic training: landscape painting. For the artist, nature is not an allegory of order or chaos but rather a group of space and light in constant evolution, a mobile environment surrounding us.
Katz is able to free studies of their function as a secondary, preparatory medium with no pictorial value of their own. These oil paintings on wood are independent of the final result on canvas, since in contrast, a gestural approach and matter invade their surface rather than the clean, transparent execution (“Cool painting”) of his works on linen. A selection of his studies on cardboard was shown this year at Vienna’s Albertina Museum.
