Peter Blum is pleased to announce the exhibition ALEX KATZ, The Complete Woodcuts and Linocuts, 1951-2001, opening on Thursday, October 4th, at 99 Wooster Street.

This exhibition is devoted exclusively to the relief prints, the 42 woodcuts and 36 linocuts, which Katz has produced since 1951. This is the first complete survey of Alex Katz in this medium. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication documenting the work and containing an essay by Merlin James.

As Merlin James states with insight in the accompanying publication: “Katz has always nurtured (or allowed) a blunt, quite primitive roughness to exist within his suavity. It is central to the emotional ambivalence and psychological complexity that is detected by all who take time to look beyond the surface (or simply to look seriously at the surface) of his art. Indeed, his return to relief print in the 1980s may to some extent have revived that rough-cut quality throughout his work, bringing out the angular awkward articulations that emerged in the first ‘signature’ figure compositions of the 1960s”.

Alex Katz’s reputation and influence as an artist has grown steadily in the past decade. Indeed, the increasing awareness of his painting (along with his drawings and smaller oils) has been instrumental in a major reassessment, particularly in Europe. This exhibition features an equally important, original and essential medium in the artist’s oeuvre.

Many museum exhibitions have been devoted to the art of Alex Katz since 1971. In 1986 the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York mounted his first retrospective and in 1995 his first major show in a European museum took place at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany. As of October 2nd his exhibition, Alex Katz, Small Paintings, is being shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York.