Photos: Alex Katz exhibit 'This Is Now' opens at High Museum

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Photos: Alex Katz exhibit 'This Is Now' opens at High Museum

Photos: Alex Katz exhibit 'This Is Now' opens at High Museum

New York artist Alex Katz discusses his art during a preview of his exhibit "Alex Katz: This is Now" at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta Thursday June 18, 2015. The show, which features 60 of Katz' paintings, runs through Sept. 6, 2015. Read more about the show here. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

More than a dozen of the landscapes in “Alex Katz, This Is Now” are so large that they had to be taken off their stretchers in New York and rolled before being transported to Atlanta, where the High then had them restretched. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

Now 87 and still hugely prolific, Katz looms large in the canon of post-World War II American art. But he’s mainly recognized for his iconic, large-scale portraits from the 1960s and ’70s, executed in his signature flat planes of color and lean lines. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

Including works from the beginning of the Brooklyn-born artist’s epic career in 1954 to 2013, the exhibit intends to show how the landscape became an early passion for him at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and how he’s often returned to it, especially over the past two decades. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

Ada Katz in front of an early portrait painted of her by her husband, Alex Katz. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

The exhibit includes 1950s collages in which Katz used the environment as a setting for the human figure, ’60s and ’70s portraiture in which landscape served as an enveloping environment for Katz’s cool figures, and paintings of this century where the figures have disappeared and landscape has moved to the foreground as the subject. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

When the High-organized show leaves the museum, it travels to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. One other European tour stop is expected to be added for the work of this enduring American artist. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

A museumgoer passes a painting in the exhibit "Alex Katz: This is Now" at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta Thursday June 18, 2015. The show, which features 60 of Katz' paintings, runs through Sept. 6, 2015. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

A museumgoer passes a painting in the exhibit "Alex Katz: This is Now" at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta Thursday June 18, 2015. The show, which features 60 of Katz' paintings, runs through Sept. 6, 2015. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

"January 3" (1993), 78.5 inches by 155 inches, is included in the exhibit "Alex Katz, This Is Now." Photograph by Todd White. © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

"10:30 am" (2006), 144 inches by 192 inches, is included in the exhibit "Alex Katz, This Is Now." Collection of the artist. © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

"Reflection 7" (2008), 108 inches by 216 inches, is included in the exhibit "Alex Katz, This Is Now." Photograph by Paul Takeuchi. © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

"Sunset 1" (2008), 108 inches by 84 inches, is included in the exhibit "Alex Katz, This Is Now." Collection of the artist. © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

"White Roses 9" (2012), 108 inches by 216 inches, is included in the exhibit "Alex Katz, This Is Now." Photograph by Paul Takeuchi. © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

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New York artist Alex Katz discusses his art during a preview of his exhibit "Alex Katz: This is Now" at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta Thursday June 18, 2015. The show, which features 60 of Katz' paintings, runs through Sept. 6, 2015. Read more about the show here. BRANT SANDERLIN/BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

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