For more than half a century Katz painted these landscapes in Maine with a virtuosity and coupled with consistent elegance. Sunset – Sunrise. The perpetual sequence of sunrise and sunset has been worked by many artists since time immemorial. Alex Katz’s Sunrise features landscapes from the edge of his Maine home. Katz is in the midst of a storm. The sun breaks orange against dark spruce trees; day falls from a thicket of trees; and a night sky emerges from nothing but unruly movements of black and gray. In these new works, Katz manifests his vision to those in the darkness, dealing with mysteries he can almost conjure in paint. The life of a painting can be truly mysterious, especially for the painter. These paintings exist metaphorically where life borders on death, and may have something sinister to tell us. Alex Katz has painted landscapes throughout his career, often depicting views from his home in Maine, including Sunrise. Katz captures what he calls “the present” or a “flash” just before the painting comes into focus. The moment is the early morning sun glowing behind a birch forest, a sublime scene as the sun rises from the horizon, scattering light in colors across the sky. The themes of Katz’s landscapes are form, surface, space, and light as they appear to him in nature.

Alex Katz’s landscape artworks are a significant part of his extensive oeuvre, showcasing his distinctive aesthetic and technical mastery. His landscapes often feature broad, sweeping vistas and minimalist compositions, which allow viewers to immerse themselves in the beauty and tranquility of the scenes depicted. Katz’s use of large canvases enhances this effect, creating an almost cinematic experience that draws the viewer into the depicted environment.

One of the hallmarks of Katz’s landscape paintings is his use of light. He masterfully captures the subtle variations in natural light, whether it’s the warm glow of a summer evening or the cool, crisp light of dawn. This focus on light imbues his works with a sense of time and place, as well as a contemplative mood that invites introspection.

Katz’s landscapes also stand out for their economy of detail. He often employs broad, flat areas of color, with minimal textural details, to convey the essence of a scene. This stylistic approach strips away unnecessary elements, leaving a distilled version of the landscape that emphasizes its fundamental shapes and colors. This technique can make his paintings appear almost abstract, yet they retain a strong connection to real-world environments.

His approach to color is another defining feature. Katz often uses a vibrant, yet restrained palette, choosing colors that convey the atmosphere and emotional tone of the landscape. His use of color is not just descriptive but also expressive, contributing to the overall mood of the painting.

Additionally, Katz’s landscapes are notable for their modernity. Despite being deeply rooted in the tradition of landscape painting, his work incorporates a contemporary sensibility, influenced by the aesthetics of modernism and abstraction. This is evident in his use of simplified forms and his focus on surface and composition, rather than on realistic representation.

Over the decades, Katz has explored a variety of landscapes, from the coastal scenes of Maine, where he spends his summers, to urban parks and rural settings. Each painting reflects his deep engagement with the specific qualities of these places, as well as his broader interest in the ways landscapes can convey mood and meaning.

In essence, Alex Katz’s landscape paintings are a study in contrasts: simplicity and complexity, realism and abstraction, light and shadow. They offer a fresh and contemplative look at the natural world, inviting viewers to experience the serenity and subtle beauty of the landscapes he portrays.

Sunrise is a woodcut and silkscreen with 6 colors, the first layer being a three-color blend for the sky, followed by three more layers of yellow, orange, and a dense black. A hand-cut oak wood panel follows with a transparent black color and is overlaid by a final silkscreen run, also in a very transparent flat black. This technique allows the rich wood grain to be seen in the depths of the birch trees that are the focus of the painting. Woodblock prints are quite sought after by collectors because unlike screen printing, the creation of the artwork and the printing process itself is much more handcrafted and done by people, i.e. the artist, than, for example, screen printing. Despite his advanced age, Alex Katz still creates the printing plates himself for etchings and woodblock prints. Alex Katz / Pioneer of Pop Art Alex Katz is especially famous for his figurative paintings: The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he was born in New York in 1927. A pioneer of Pop Art, he always focused on the essentials and early on explored simplified forms and high-contrast color composition. His art is diverse, but always has beauty as its central theme. The artist can now look back on more than 200 solo exhibitions as well as around 500 group exhibitions; his diverse works are part of over 100 collections worldwide. Alex Katz lives and works in New York and Maine and still paints and prints editions which are for sale. Collectors all around the world buy his art both as an investment and for aestethical reasons. His work contains numerous historical references, from Japanese block printing, Matisse and Monet to Jackson Pollock, Degas and, of course, Pop Art. Especially in his landscape paintings, the influence of Japanese art is clearly visible.

Alex Katz / Pioneer of Pop Art

Alex Katz is especially famous for his figurative paintings: The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in New York in 1927. As a pioneer of Pop Art, he always concentrated on the essentials and early on, he dealt with simplified forms and contrasting color compositions. His art is diverse, but always has beauty as its central theme. The artist can now look back on more than 200 solo and around 500 group exhibitions; his diverse works are part of over 100 collections worldwide. Alex Katz lives and works in New York and Maine.

His work contains numerous historical references, from Japanese woodblock, Matisse and Monet to Jackson Pollock, Degas and of course Pop Art. Especially Katz` landscapes display the huge influence of Japanese art.