The American figurative painter Alex Katz has maintained a deep connection to Maine since he first ventured out of New York Metropolis in 1949 when he acquired a scholarship to attend the Skowhegan Faculty of Portray and Sculpture. Katz ultimately turned a lifelong summer time resident of Lincolnville, a seaside city the place fellow artist Lois Dodd and his former spouse, summary painter Jean Cohen, bought a yellow farmhouse the place he continues to observe and develop his artistry at this time.
Whereas Katz continuously reveals his fondness for Maine in his work — his Lincolnville residence and the state’s landscapes repeatedly seem in his artwork— he additionally shows his appreciation for the state by his contributions to native arts establishments. Since establishing his namesake basis in 2004 with the mission of “assist[ing] the work of rising and underrecognized artists,” Katz has donated over 150 artworks throughout disciplines to the Portland Museum of Artwork (PMA), from work and drawings to sculptures and prints by artists the muse has supported and bought over a long time.
Displayed on the museum within the type of a repeatedly rotating choice, the trove contains items like Robert Rauschenberg’s gritty sand and cement sculptural set up “Untitled, Early Egyptian” (1973), Martha Diamond’s architectural triptych portray “Central Character” (1983), and Philip Guston’s meditative panorama portrait, “Dawn” (1979). Moreover, the PMA’s practically year-long exhibition Alex Katz: Marriage ceremony Costume, that includes a number of large-scale work targeted on the artist’s curiosity in style, was organized by a curatorial crew that included Katz himself and centered his longtime relationship with Maine’s largest and oldest public artwork establishment. Subsequent summer time, his presents to the PMA would be the focus of one other new exhibition and publication, Chief Curator Shalini Le Gall instructed Hyperallergic, with extra data to come back.
“Lots of the works deliver experiences and concepts from past Maine’s borders to Portland and the PMA, particularly reinforcing the deep connections between Maine and New York, two areas with longstanding connections to the artist,” Le Gall continued, pointing to Diamond’s portrayal of New York skyscrapers and Guston’s summary dawn portrait as examples.
Works by modern rising artists that Katz’s nonprofit has gifted to the museum additionally carry this thread, resembling Brooklyn-based artist Marcus Leslie Singleton’s oil portray “The Author” (2022), which depicts a seated determine wearing vibrant orange and white clothes studying a textual content inside the confines of a jail cell. One other instance contains the autumnal-toned portray “Combined Emotions” (2022) by Swiss-born, New York-based artist Yves Scherer, whose personal observe spanning sculpture, portray, and lenticular prints in some ways parallels that of Katz’s.
One other central element of Katz’s presents to the PMA consists of works by artists with deep roots in Maine, like Fairfield Porter, Marsden Hartley, Yvonne Jacquette, and Rackstraw Downes (who initially ventured to the state within the early ’70s on Katz’s recommendation). These donations additionally embrace native contemporaries resembling Hannah Secord Wade, whose pale blue monochromatic “Canine Fountain” (2019) was donated to the museum by Katz’s basis in 2021, making it the primary piece by the painter to enter its assortment.
“Understanding how artists work in our communities is very vital given Katz’s connections to the state and its cultural id,” wrote Le Gall.
Katz’s cultural patronage has additionally prolonged past the PMA to different arts establishments within the state. Between Colby Faculty in Waterville, the Farnsworth Artwork Museum in Rockland, and Bowdoin Faculty in Brunswick, Katz and his basis have collectively gifted practically 1,000 artworks by dozens of artists spanning postwar modernists like Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns; longtime buddies, together with Dodd and Juan Gomez; and mid-career painters resembling Merlin James and Elizabeth Peyton.
He has additionally donated lots of of his personal work to Maine’s establishments: In 1996, the Colby Faculty Museum of Artwork famously devoted an whole wing to Katz’s works, and establishments like Bowdoin and Farnsworth have exhibited his work in a number of reveals over time because the artist’s worldwide fame continues to increase.
“I preferred the liberty of Maine,” Katz mentioned in a 2022 interview, recalling his first impressions of the coastal state, the place he retains a studio and to which he returns for months every year. “You weren’t constrained by the bourgeoisie neighborhood the place I used to be dwelling in New York. I preferred the sunshine rather a lot too; it felt acquainted, it felt like Queens the place I grew up. I’ve been going to Maine ever since.
