Alex Katz, Close Up

Every morning, the water in Jamaica Bay, New York shifts into a porcelain sheen. It was a sight that both puzzled and captivated Alex Katz in the early ‘40s, then a night watchman on the Long Island Railroad. Katz remembers peering down at the iridescent waves and dreaming of painting what he saw. A dream that soon became a reality. Now, across the Atlantic Ocean and nearly 80 years later, “Claire, Grass and Water” sees his perspective abstracted and zoomed-in. The selection of never-before-seen paintings made between 2021 and 2022 opens on April 17 at Venice’s Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

The exhibition combines two of the artist’s long-standing interests, nature and fashion, in a detailed study of their elements. There are close-up frames of bodies of water and grasslands inspired by the years Katz spent in Maine—where he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture—and details from the iconic designs of the late mid-century fashion designer Claire McCardell. McCardell has been a muse of sorts for the 96-year-old artist, whose no-nonsense approach, cultish following, and interest in the human form are among the pair’s many similarities. “The idea was, you can spend the day welding and go home and cook some hamburgers outdoors and wear the same clothes,” said Katz in an interview about the late designer’s “unaffected” designs. In Claire McCardell 10, 2022, the canvas is split in half with an outline of McCardell’s head, neck, and shoulder across the left and the designer’s checkered lime-green belted dress on the right.

“Claire, Grass and Water” follows Katz’s recent landmark retrospective at New York’s Guggenheim Museum that gathered his paintings, sketches, collages, and cut-out works from the late 1940s. The retrospective, entitled “Gathering,” was an amalgamation of all the people and places Katz admires, from his wife Ada Del Moro (The Red Smile, 1963) to a pine-green forest in Maine (Crosslight, 2019). At Fondazione Giorgio Cini, a more intimate portrait of water and greenery unfolds. In Ocean 9, 2022, a haphazard array of pale white strokes is set against a dark abyss. The erratic movement of the sea is captured in distorting lines that threaten to pull viewers into the churning depths, amplified further by the painting’s larger-than-life dimensions. From the lakes of Maine to the canals of Venice, Katz’s works not only beckon audiences to dive in.

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“Claire, Grass and Water” is on view at the Fondazione Giorgio Cinian at 30133 Venice, Metropolitan City of Venice, Italy, until Sep 29, 2024.

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