The Works of Alex Katz and David Hockney at Surovek Gallery

Alex Katz

Alex Katz is a consummate New Yorker, and much of his work reflects the style and sensibility of a sophisticated city dweller…but not all of it.

 

In 1949, after he graduated from Cooper Union, Katz received a scholarship to spend the summer at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he was introduced to plein air painting. Until that summer, Katz had studied modern art and was taught to paint from drawings. Katz credits that summer, and the next (which he also spent at the Skowhegan School) with giving him “a reason to devote my life to painting.”

 

Katz has spent every summer, since 1954, at his summer home in Lincolnville, Maine, painting en plein air. His most recent paintings have been of flowers, specifically irises, which he has shown at several venues in the US.

 

Katz imbues his paintings of flowers with the same bold and intense colors that he uses for his portraits and figurative works. Alex Katz will have a solo exhibit at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin in Paris from February 19 through March 19, 2021.

 

David Hockney

David Hockney settled down in his 17th-century traditional, half-timbered Normandy cottage and began painting his surroundings in March 2019. The views that he captured are on exhibit at Galerie Lelong & Co. in Paris. Ma Normandie, consisting of a dozen paintings as well as a series of inkjet prints on paper, will be on exhibit until December 23, 2020.

 

Hockney also continues to do iPad drawings of his surroundings, a skill that he has honed for more than a decade. Hockney’s iPad works are so unique, and so uniquely Hockney, that London’s Royal Academy of Arts has announced an upcoming exhibit of 116 of Hockney’s iPad works.

 

Called David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, The Academy calls the works a reminder of the constant renewal and wonder of the natural world – and the beauty of spring. The works will be on display from March 27 through August 22, 2021.

 

Hockney himself said, “The only real things in life are food and love in that order, just like our little dog Ruby. I really believe this and the source of art is love. I love life.”

 

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October 21, 2020