ATLANTA, GA.- “The High’s collection of contemporary art is growing in exciting and diverse ways, and signals our commitment to creating an anthology of important 21st-century works,” commented Michael Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director. “We are grateful to Alex for his generous gift of ‘Twilight’ and look forward to adding to our holdings of his work; his extraordinary paintings bridge the Museum’s fine collection of post-painterly abstraction with its expanding collection of Pop art.”

“Winter Landscape 2” (2007) and “Twilight” (1998) are the first paintings by Alex Katz to enter the High’s collection and build significantly upon the Museum’s group of important works by masters of American Pop art such as Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann. Katz is currently represented in the High’s collection by five prints produced between 1969 and 1972. Although well-known as a figurative painter, Katz has always been recognized for his landscape paintings, which have played a central role in his work from the time he studied painting at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1949–1950). Katz explains that Skowhegan’s plein air painting program gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.”

In addition, the recently acquired steel sculpture “Untitled” (2009) by Turner Prize-winning British artist Anish Kapoor marks both a departure for the artist and a return to a seminal and emblematic form in his oeuvre―the concave dish. Now fragmented by a repeating triangular pattern, the surface of the dish distorts its viewer in a multiplicity of fragmented images, reflecting Kapoor’s interest in fractals. The work will be on view in July, alongside Kapoor’s work “Pot for Her.” In addition, the artist’s London-based studio is lending the sculpture “Marsupial” (2006). All three works will be installed together in the Wieland Pavilion, creating the first monographic installation of work by Kapoor in Atlanta.

Alex Katz
Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Alex Katz is one of the most significant artists of his generation. Over the course of five decades, Katz has produced a celebrated body of work associated with the Pop art movement that includes paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints. In addition to more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group shows internationally since 1951, his work can be found in nearly every major American museum, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Katz is also well represented in many of the most prestigious European museums, including the Museum Moderne Kunst, Vienna; the Tate, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay in 1954 and moved to London in 1973 to study. He gained international attention in 1990 when he represented Great Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the Premio Duemila prize and nominated for the Turner Prize, which he won in 1991. The arc of Kapoor’s career from early performance to monumental public sculpture envelops and reflects the history of post-minimal artistic practice around the world. His work can be found in such world-renowned collections as the Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco.