Alex Katz Subway Drawings April 27 – June 30, 2017 · Alex Katz Subway Drawings April 27 – June 30, ... Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement. Katz was inducted

515 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 T +1 212 256 1669 [email protected] timothytaylor.com

Alex KatzSubway Drawings

April 27 – June 30, 2017

Timothy Taylor 16×34 is pleased to announce an historic solo exhibition by Alex Katz, of the artist’s notebook drawings from the 1940s, presented in collaboration with Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome. This will be the first time these drawings are brought together in an exhibition.

Coming of age as an artist in the 1940s in New York, Katz developed his unique approach to contemporary representational painting in reaction to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, prior to the emergence of Pop Art. Subway Drawings exemplifies the artist’s life-long pursuit to capture the present tense, through a highly accomplished but sparse line that has endured throughout his prolific career. Drawing serves as a crucial facet of the artist’s practice – a tool of immediacy that articulates Katz’s most essential images, across all the processes in which he engages.

During his time at Cooper Union, Katz chose figures on the subway as his subjects, preferring them over the models in the Cooper Union Art School figure drawing studio, where he attended from 1946–49. Riding the subway into the early hours of the morning, sketching portraits of passengers, the subway in effect became Katz’s classroom.

These experiments were part of Katz’s search for a unique style of visual communication and bear witness to the artist’s development

as a draftsman – a critical element of his acclaimed painting practice. The drawings are deceivingly complex: there is a sense that the subjects, despite sharing a subway car, were never present in the same space or at the same time. Lost in their own contemplation, Katz’s subjects are surrounded by nothingness. There is no background or narrative, aside from the viewer’s interpretation of the work. This tension is essential to Katz’s style: portraits are rendered in fragmented moments, captured in the fleeting period between one subway station to the next. Though completed 70 years ago, Katz’s subways drawings bring forth a charged immediacy.

Katz is represented in over 100 public collections worldwide, and throughout his career has been the recipient of numerous awards: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Painting in 1972, and in 1987, the Pratt Institute’s Mary Buckley Award for Achievement and The Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement. Katz was inducted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988, and recognized with honorary doctorates by Colby College, Maine in 1984 and Colgate University, Hamilton, New York in 2005. In 2007, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum, New York

Alex KatzSubway Drawings April 27 – June 30, 2017

Alex KatzCrowd on Subway, c. 1940

Pen on paper4 7/8 × 7 7/8 in.12.4 × 20 cmT0011012

Alex KatzBig Man Looking Down, c. 1940

Black ink on paper4 7/8 × 7 7/8 in.12.4 × 20 cmT0011009

Alex KatzLadies Sitting on the Subway, c. 1940

Blue ink on paper8 × 5 in.20.3 × 12.7 cmT0011014

Alex KatzLady on Subway, c. 1940

Black ink on paper5 × 4 in.12.7 × 10.2 cmT0011015

Alex KatzLady with Flowers on her Hat, c. 1940

Pencil on paper8 × 4 7/8 in.20.3 × 12.4 cmT0011032

Alex KatzProfile of Woman in Glasses, c. 1940


Alex KatzMan Reading / Notes, c. 1940


Alex KatzNotes / People in a Park, c. 1940

Pencil / Black ink on paper7 1/2 × 4 7/8 in.19.1 × 12.4 cmT0011054

Alex KatzMan in Hat / Two Men Talking on the Subway, c. 1940

Pencil / Black ink on paper8 × 5 in.20.3 × 12.7 cmT0011035

Alex KatzMan with Hat Smoking, c. 1940


Alex KatzMan with Newspaper on the Subway, c. 1940


Alex KatzOlder Woman with Purse, c. 1940

Black ink on paper5 1/8 × 5 in.13 × 12.7 cmT0011053

Alex KatzMan with Hat Leaning on Balcony, c. 1940

Black ink on paper6 1/4 × 4 1/2 in.15.9 × 11.4 cmT0011047

Alex KatzSeated Woman / Two Women, c. 1940

Black ink / pencil on paper8 × 5 in.20.3 × 12.7 cmT0011057

Alex KatzSeated Woman with Glasses / Woman with Purse, c. 1940

Black ink / pencil on paper8 × 5 in.20.3 × 12.7 cmT0011058

Alex KatzStudy of A Man's Face, c. 1940


Alex KatzSubway Scene, c. 1940

Black ink on paper4 3/4 × 8 in.12.1 × 20.3 cmT0011063

Alex KatzSubway Scene with Three People, c. 1940

Black ink on paper4 7/8 × 8 in.12.4 × 20.3 cmT0011065

Alex KatzThree Men on Subway, c. 1940


Alex KatzTwo Men, c. 1940


I got out of the Navy. The next day I went to Pratt Institute. They were full. Someone told me about Cooper Union. They had an entrance exam in three days. I took it and got in. I could make a drawing from antique casts, given a week. I also could make slow drawings of people and places. At Cooper, all I could do in twenty minutes was two lines. After two weeks, the teacher, Bob Gwathmey, suggested I get a larger pad. I realized that if things continued this way I would flunk out. So I got some small pads and started drawing around the clock — while commuting in subways, on lunch breaks, nights in bars and restaurants, jazz concerts, after dates on the subway. After three years, I could draw from life and only drew when I needed to. I did not want to become a sketch artist.

— Alex Katz, 2017

515 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 T +1 212 256 1669 [email protected] timothytaylor.com

Alex KatzSubway Drawings

April 27 – June 30, 2017

Alex Katz Subway Drawings April 27 – June 30, 2017 · Alex Katz Subway Drawings April 27 – June 30, ... Queens Museum of Art Award for Lifetime Achievement. Katz was inducted

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