International Art News

Alex Katz Eleuthera 1984 Oil on linen 305 x 670.5 cm Private Collection, Courtesy Galería Javier López, Madrid © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

9 May to 23 September 2012 – Tate St Ives
Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Alex Katz is one of the most important and respected living American artists. In July 2012 Katz celebrates his 85th birthday, and a career that spans a remarkable six decades. Tate St Ives Summer Exhibition 2012 brings together over 30 canvases and collages from the 1950s to now.

Given the gallery’s location on the beach, and the nature of the summer season here, the exhibition places a special emphasis on Katz’s seascapes and beach scenes, as well as images of family holidays and friends, painted in his own seaside retreat of Lincolnville, Maine, where he continues to spend his summers.

To accompany the show Katz has made a personal selection of works from the Tate Collection. Drawn from British, European and American artists, he brings together an illuminating cross-generational selection of artists for this special one-room display.

Alex Katz Round Hill 1977 Oil on Linen 180.3 x 243.8 cm Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Partial and Promised Gift of Barry and Julie Smooke Art © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Digital Image © 2012 Museum Associates / LACMA

Katz’s paintings are defined by their flatness of colour and form, their economy of line, and their cool but seductive emotional detachment. He works in the tradition of European and American artists like Manet, Matisse, and Hopper. Many of Katz’s works picture an everyday America of easy living, leisure and recreation. Working with the themes of portraiture, landscape, figure studies, marine scenes and flowers, Katz is influenced as much by style, fashion and music as he is art history.

In the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was still the dominant force in American art when Katz began exhibiting. Whilst his interests were firmly based in the previous generation of artists including Pollock, Rothko, Guston and De Kooning (De Kooning and Guston in particular offered early support and encouragement), his own painting developed in reaction to their work, and he is acknowledged as a hugely influential precursor to the Pop Art movement with which he became associated throughout the 1960s.

Tate St Yves

Mel Ramos Della Monty, 1971 Oil on Canvas Private Collection © VBK Vienna, 2011

18 February to 29 May 2011 – Albertina
The Albertina will dedicate a broad exhibition to the important Pop Art exponent Mel Ramos. The occasion of the exhibition was the Californian artist’s 75th birthday in 2010 as well as a celebration of over fifty years of the Pop Art movement. A representative selection of Ramos’s oeuvre, it focuses primarily on his paintings, and also includes preliminary sketches. The major works on display cover the entire spectrum of the artist’s creative phases, from the figurative depictions departing from abstract expressionism in his early paintings, through to his pictures of comic heroes and Wonder Woman from the 1960s, and, of course, the commercial pin-ups that made Ramos famous in the late 1960s. In his satire on brand advertising, the humorous artist depicts stylish pin-up girls in these oil paintings, wrapped lasciviously around giant Coke bottles, cigarette packets and pieces of diced cheese. The exhibition also features the series A Salute to Art History, in which the artist peps up nude pictures of classical masters with pop culture’s sex appeal, and paintings of Californian landscapes that most people.

Museum Hours

Martini Miss #2, 2004 88x58,5 cm

From the 11th of November 2010 to the 7th of January 2011- Galerie Hafenrichter
Mel Ramos (born July 24, 1935) is a U.S. figurative painter, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, he gained his greatest popularity in association with the Pop Art movement of the 1960′s.

Mel Ramos received his first important recognition in the early 1960s; since 1959 he has participated in more than 120 group shows. Along with other artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist, Ramos produced art works that celebrated aspects of popular culture as represented in mass media. His paintings have been shown in major exhibitions of Pop Art in the U.S. and in Europe, and reproduced in books, catalogs, and periodicals throughout the world.

The classification of Ramos within any particular school of art is disputed. Some critical observers of the “art scene” classify Mel Ramos as a pop artist. However, others believe identification of Ramos’ work within the Pop movement of the 1960s implies a satirical or parodic bent which does not reflect the broader context of his paintings, and instead defend his “parodies” as respectful, affectionate tributes, a celebration of images with personal meaning.

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