Recent Acquisitions at VFA

This has been a banner year for Alex Katz. His retrospective at the Guggenheim was a huge success. Katz had other successful solo shows this year in Chicago, Vienna, Paris and the Netherlands.

One of his most interesting solo shows was at the MAK Center’s Schindler House in West Hollywood, California. The show, called Sunrise, was an exhibit of portraits that Katz refers to as splits. Each portrait has a cubist feel yet retains the artists’ seemingly minimalist colors and form. Sunrise 2, a superb woodcut, done in 2022, is one of our recent acquisitions.

Katz is the consummate New Yorker. He paints landscapes and flowers in his summer home and studio in Maine, but does most of his work in the SoHo studio in which he has been living and working since 1968. Cityscape, another recent acquisition, is a fine example of Katz’s ability to paint, even a cityscape, with minimal strokes and colors.

At age 96, Alex Katz is still working every day, still creating paintings and fine art prints that are as fresh and innovative as ever. “Painting seems and old man’s business.” Katz said, “After a certain time you’re out of it, and you just paint masterpieces.”

  Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) was one of the most innovate and influential artists of the mid-twentieth century. 

Her “soak-stain” technique of pouring thinned paint on raw canvas created magnificent swaths of color and design. When her work, Mountains and Sea, was shown in 1952, Frankenthaler, just 24 years old, became a driving force in American art. Her works inspired a movement toward Color Field painting and Minimalism.

In the 1960s, she began to use her technique in printmaking. She created woodcuts, aquatints, silkscreens and lithographs that often exceeded her paintings in their beauty and uniqueness.

Skywriting, a recently acquired screenprint that Frankenthaler made in 1997, showcases the finest aspects of the artist’s techniques.

Robert Indiana’s (1928-2018) iconic LOVE sculpture sat on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan for decades. In 2019 it was removed for conservation. On September 13, the sculpture was placed in Rockefeller Plaza, where it will be on display until October 23 and then will be moved to a new location, not yet disclosed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Indiana lived in New York for more than twenty years before secluding himself on in a large home and studio on the island of Vinalhaven, Maine in 1978.

He made many unique works that paid tribute to those he admired. Indiana’s Metamorphosis of Norma Jean, now available at VFA, is an homage to Marilyn Monroe. The central portrait is surrounded by her birth name, Norma Jean Mortenson, her birth year, 1926, and the year of her death, 1962. The screenprint is hand signed and dated.

 Much of the beauty of Donald Sultan’s (1951-present) works can be attributed to the textures that he is able to attain through his use of industrial materials. His subjects, like fruits and flowers, take on a unique visual quality with Sultan’s skillful mastery of mediums. 

For Oranges on Branches, a recent acquisition, Sultan used a variety of techniques to to contrast the fruit on a cream background. 

Please contact us if you would like more information about the fine art available at VFA.