MoMA Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art announces Alex Katz: Seasons, a selection of works from the artist’s new series of landscape paintings, on view in the Donald and Catherine Marron Family Atrium from July 4 through September 8, 2024. The presentation will feature four monumental paintings—one for each season, ranging in size from ten to twenty feet long—that belong to an extensive series of new works created in Katz’s New York studio between 2022 and 2024 that capture landscapes in New York and in Lincolnville, Maine, where Katz spends his summers. Alex Katz: Seasons is organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Elizabeth Wickham, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, and Lydia Mullin, Manager, Collection Galleries, Department of Curatorial Affairs.

“Some of our projects at MoMA take nearly a decade to prepare, while others are virtually spur of the moment, as part of our mission to be a platform for brand-new work,” said Temkin. “These new paintings by Alex Katz, part of a set of more than 100 compositions with trees made over the past two years, show an artist at the top of his game, doing what he’s been doing for decades and somehow still making it entirely new and surprising.”

Alex Katz: Seasons will mark the museum debut of Katz’s latest series of landscapes. To create these works, Katz often begins with photographs, shot on his iPhone, and smaller painted sketches, which he subsequently transforms into large-scale compositions. Katz paints quickly, frequently completing an entire painting within a single morning. Katz removes the traditional indication of a horizon—a decision that, when paired with the large scale of the paintings, envelopes the viewer in an environment with no clear beginning or end.

Katz said of the series, “The sensation of color is what I wanted. The sensation of seeing.”