Alex Katz - You Smile and the Angels Sing - 2017
Alex Katz, You Smile and the Angels Sing portfolio consists of 11 aquatint etchings drawn by the artist in January of 2016 in New York City. The drawings were proofed and copper photogravure plates were prepared by Chris Creyts from February through April of 2016 in Saint Petersburg, Florida. The final proofs were approved by the artist and signed B.A.T. The edition of 30 with 6 artist proofs measuring 17.25 x 14 inches (44 x 35.5 cm), plate size 12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 23 cm), was hand-pulled on 400 gsm Twinrocker white handmade paper with deckle edges from June through December of 2016. Each print was signed and numbered in pencil by the artist, lower left, and stamped with the publisher and artist copyright, verso, lower right.The portfolio is encased in a custom linen box and accompanied with a luxe book illustrating the etchings and paired with 11 poems by: Alex Katz, Vincent Katz, John Giorno, Elaine Equi, Ron Padgett, Jennifer Moxley, Ted Greenwald, John Godfrey, Eileen Myles, Carter Ratcliff and Norma Cole.
Paper size: 17.25 x 14 inches (44 x 35.5 cm),
Plate size 12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 23 cm)
Edition of 30
Signed and numbered
Price suite of 11 prints: Price: Price on request
Prints only available in portfolio
This limited edition Alex Katz print portfolio is available at New Art Editions
Alex Katz, born 1927 in New York as the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, is one of the most important painters of our time, worldwide. Katz studied at the Cooper Union School of Art from 1946 to 1949. He then attended the renowned Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, which would later also produce such important artists as David Reed and Jason Rhoades, among others. From the 1950s onward, Katz developed a very independent painterly language which addresses the traditional genre of the landscape, as well as the portrait or figure painting. Although the general public sees Alex Katz as a pop artist, he does not consider himself to be one. Rather than emanating from a graphic implementation, such as that which pervades the works of Robert Indiana or Roy Lichtenstein for example, his images always emanate from painting.
Katz always begins his work by occupying himself with paint, from which he develops his very characteristic large-scale intercourse with space. The design of his pictorial reality is usually laid out extensively and appears with sharp, clear edges in his works from, at the latest, the end of the 1960s onward. He sees himself as a post-abstract painter who, in his realistic painting style, arranges the figure elements and sign elements in such a way that the observers combine them “in their heads” themselves. Katz is interested in the elementary question: What is reality? Taking this question as a starting point, he has spent the past 50 years repeatedly exploring possible ways with which “realism” can be redefined. Color and light play a central role in his works. Thus, even despite the ostensible realism, he pays less attention to the motif than to the look and style, i.e. the appearance. Alex Katz is represented in numerous international private collections and museum collections, and can look back on a wealth of international exhibition activity.
