Alex Katz in Maine

"Alex Katz is one of the most influential painters of our era. Having come of age in the 1950s alongside the New York School of painters and poets, he has impacted generations of artists with his iconic images. Best known for his emotionally ambiguous and psychologically complex portraits of cosmopolitan friends and colleagues from the New York art world, he is also admired for his bold, transcendent landscape paintings and his coolly intimate portraits of friends and family - often painted in Maine, where Katz has summered since 1954. Many of Katz's most poetic, melancholy and slyly humorous works have their settings in or near Lincolnville, Maine, and are reproduced here in conjunction with the Farnsworth Art Museum's summer 2005 exhibition. The topic of Maine in Katz's work is examined in depth for the first time, in an essay by art critic Sanford Schwartz. Also included are texts by Suzette McAvoy, the exhibition's curator, and Vincent Katz, the artist's son."--BOOK JACKET.