The Fondazione Giorgio Cini presents an exhibition of new works by American artist Alex Katz, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and supported by Thaddaeus Ropac gallery on the occasion of the sixtieth edition of the Venice Biennale.
The exhibition follows the artist’s recent retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, and features three major groups of works created between 2021 and 2022 representing three key aspects of his practice. One group of paintings based on the clothes of mid-century American fashion designer Claire McCardell is accompanied by large-scale close-up depictions of inky oceans and grassy terrain in shades of green and yellow.
In a recent interview, Katz described Claire McCardell’s creations as “unaffected” – a quality that harmonises with her painterly, understated bipartite or even tripartite compositions, with fragments of various garments and models recalling the visual strategies of Cubism and, in particular, Picasso’s Portrait of Dora Maar (1937). Katz wrote of his admiration for the painting in his 2012 autobiography Invented Symbols. His own assemblage blends various perspectives and fragments into an impossible yet captivating image: in one work, two models in different, slightly staggered outfits are joined at the centre of the canvas to form a single striking silhouette, while in another, a female figure appears to be protruding from a dress cut in half.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring a conversation between Alex Katz and Luca Massimo Barbero and an essay on his fashion paintings, edited by art historian and curator Olivier Gabet.