All images are property of the artist, Ronald Katz. All rights reserved, 2023.
Instagram: @katz.ronald
Contact: srkatz@verizon.net
Website: www.ronaldkatz.com
Book created by: Erica
Criss Owner/DirectorCRISS Collaborations
www.crisscollaborations.com
crisscollaborations@gmail.com
Ronald Katz’s work is diverse, encompassing a range of imagery, including still life, landscape, figurative, and abstraction. His inspiration emanates from emotional and aesthetic response and personal associations regarding the variety of subjects that intrigue him. Close scrutiny and increased familiarity of the works should enable the viewer to identify key themes regarding subject matter, including nature and the environment, music, science, as well as reference to antiquity and art history, and from small intimate still life to large complex canvasses.
In certain works Ronald Katz presents a visual narrative, often involving dramatic juxtapositions of seemingly disparate imagery, though ultimately resolved to a unified visual symphony.
Ronald Katz’s Brooklyn, NY studio.
Still Life with Titian, oil on canvas, 12" x 16"
Still Life, oil on linen, 18’ x 22”
Bottles and Fruit, oil on linen, 11" x 12"
Still Life with Death Valley, oil on linen, 12" x 16"
Fall
Landscape, oil on linen, 15" x 26"
Badlands, oil on linen, 18" x 26"
African Landscape, oil on canvas, 24" x 30"
Snowbird-Summer, oil on canvas, 32" x 48"
Entrance to Manhattan Bridge, oil on linen, 16" x 20"
The Corner, oil on linen, 30" x 36"
The subject was the apartment of Sherry Abel in building #3 of Washington Square Village in Manhattan, New York City. We had originally been introduced by her long-time companion, Mark Newman, a retired barge captain, and my friend and neighbor in a tenement on the Lower East Side. I often visited with them at her residence, where discussions on various subjects, intellectual, artistic and political, etc. generallyoccurred.
Sherry Abel had been married to the playwright Lionel Abel, author of Metatheater and The Intellectual Follies, and professor at Buffalo State university. They had a daughter Merry, who, though talented artistically, tragically took her own life. This needs mentioning since, almost centrally positioned in the painting, is a rendition of her portrait bust done by the prominent artist, Larry Rivers, done in a cement like medium, and, and whoexclaimed,onhearingofthetragedy,that“Merrywaslifeitself”.
I was very much taken with the visual plethora of the apartment; all the objects including books, spare, though thoughtful, furnishings, art including, along with the Larry Rivers work, Merry’s watercolors, a Chinese horse sculpture, ceramics, teapots, shells a candlestick, rugs and plants, etc. Basically, I considered painting this subject both inspirational and challenging.Fortunately, Sherry was away visiting family in Chicago for a number of days, enabling Mark Newman to let me in to do the painting. He even posed on the balcony, which, along with the parakeets, added a touch of life to the inanimate scene (at a previous timetwocatshadalsobeenresidentthere).
Note, the title might as well be New York Interior and Exterior, owing to the outside view of that New York neighborhood, which included the Empire State Building, Washington Square Arch, and the NYU library building.Onelibertytakenwaseliminatingacornerandextendingthetwo walls into one plane, thus enabling a more effective tableau. I consider thistobeoneofthebestandmostsignificantworksIhaddoneuptothat date,providingameaningfulstatementofthattimeandplace.
New York Interior, oil on linen, 48" x 66"
Room at the Met, oil on linen, 48" x 66"
Seated Figure ( after Pompeii), oil on linen, 24" x 20"
Horse Entering Stable, oil on board, 5" x 7"
African Veldt Group, oil on linen, 12" x 14"
Kudo, oil on linen, 28" x 44"
Pasture, oil on canvas board, 24" x 36"
Grey Abstraction, , acrylic on canvas, 42" x 54"
Blue/Green, , oil on canvas, 18" x 16"
Lost and Found is a visual amalgam of aspects of lost, stolen, destroyed or rediscovered art, extinct, threatened and endangered species, and related matters of the environment. Unexpected and at times using varied means of representation, drawing, composition and color, and ultimately resolvedinaunifiedvisualexpression.
Three major paintings destroyed in World war 2 are represented in this, the first of the series; Rubens’s “Neptune and Amphitrite” (Berlin), Courbet’s “Stone Breakers” (Dresden) and Van Gogh’s only “Sunflowers” with a blue background (Tokyo). Vermeer’s “The Concert”, stolen recently fromtheGardnerMuseumisalsorepresentedina double image. Endangered species here are the Miami Blue butterfly and the Black Rhinoceros, andtheHorseshoeCrab.Extinctcreaturesinclude fossil fish and the Passenger Pigeon, whose extinction was caused by humans.Additionally, a detailfromoneoftheearliestknownart,Chauvet Cave in France, includes depiction of extinct European lions. Finally, a Keeled Green Snake which was saved by the artist from a roadside disaster.
This colorful work is one of the most complex of the series regarding both technique and subject matter. The dominant figure is immersed in an array of imagery, including fossils of extinct creatures (Keichosaurus and Ammonite) endangeredspecies(poisonousdartfrogand PaintedBunting)severalpaintingsbytheartist(a landscape, a seascape and a still life), renditions fromGreekantiquity(vasepaintingandsculpture), a portrait of Beethoven via Antoine Bourdelle’s sculpture, and quotes from Gauguin and Durer. The easel is indicative of the work being as much abouttheprocessofpaintingasitisregardingthe variedsubjectmatter.
Featured prominently is a triple portrait of the composer, Claude Debussy and a painting by Matisse, formerlyconfiscatedbytheNaziregime,andcontested by heirs of the original owner. A trompe l’oeil effect includes translation into oil of one of the artist’s beach scene watercolors. The worn hiking boots are in homage to Van Gogh.The butterfly is a tribute to the artist's late friend, Irving Finkelstein, professor of Art History,andalifelonglepidopterist.Includedarevarious still life elements of fruit, flowers, shells and leaves, animals and birds. Another subtitle might be The Bee Stinger, referring to the smallest, though perhaps not leastimportantdetailinthepainting.
oil on linen 30” x 40”
Inadditiontotheaspectsofartandnature,anelement new to this series is encountered in this painting, namely religion; specifically, quotes from Michelangelo’s drawing of Hamen from the Old Testament, and El Greco’s Assumption from the New Testament.(Note:thisisnotanaffirmationofreligionas much as it is a response to dramatic imagery in an aesthetic sense.) The endangered species include an AmurTiger,SecretaryBirdandEasternCoralSnake (note: that bird is a predator of African snakes such as cobras,nottheNorthAmericanonerepresentedhere). The extinct species is represented by a dinosaur footprint,andaquotefromtheChauvetCavepaintings shows an extinct bovine, the Aurox. The artist, not yet extinct,makesanappearanceheretoo.
34” x 33”
Thislargecanvas,oneoftheartist’smostcomplex,and incontinuationofthemodeoftheseries,juxtaposesart historical material with nature and the personal.Michelangelo’s recently restored Prophet Daniel, Rodin’s penultimate head of Balzac’s and Picasso’s papier colle' HEAD shares space with Cezanne’s obsession with Mont St. Victoire, the artist painting the mountains at Snowbird, Utah and climbing in the Cape Province, A Caribbean beach, a portraitofDonna,aseagullandaSunbird(homageto MartinJohnsonHeade),insects,ashellandoakleaf, interspersed with a trompe-l'oeil effect of Cezannes apples in the still life array. Finally, completing the groupofheads,isaskullofoneofourextinctancestors, AustralopithecusBoisei.Thisworkisasmuchaboutthe actofpaintingasitisaboutthesubjectmatterathand.
Lost and Found # 5 (Mountains and Sea) oil on linen
56” x 62”
This work, which began as a sketch from a model, evolvedintothefinalarrayofimages,includingthestill life and naturalistic components (including a fledgling piping plover) along with the four figurative components, each representing a different method. TheCaravaggioquoteisaninterpretationfromanold master, the main figure originally from a live model but more formally structured, a self- portrait, and a re-invented head derived from a drawing by Gauguin. A goal here was creating unification with disparate anddiversesources.
oil on linen
32" x 36"
A South African Meditation, acrylic on canvas, 30” x 50”
Allegory, oil on linen, 40" x 52"
Partially inspired by a painting by Gauguin, this work represents concern regarding environmental degradation,inthiscaseburningdownanddestroying the rainforests. The animal here is an endangered South American species. The blue shirted man is an indigenous tribal chief lamenting the destruction. One woman is indigenous, the other European, representative of the diverse populations in many countriesinvolved.
The Maned Wolf, oil on canvas, 50" x 54"
The Art Class, oil on linen, 64" x 72"
Piero to RaphaelReflections on The School of Athens
acrylic on canvas 64" x 72"
Mark, oil on linen, 30” x 40”
Figure Composition with Horseshoe Crab and Red Knot oil on linen 65” x 70”
Gauguin, watercolor, 20" x 28"
Cezanne, watercolor, 13" x 21"
Rock Formation - Acadia, watercolor, 14" x 20"
Beach Debris, watercolor, 12 x 16
Maine Coast, watercolor, 12” x 16”
Ronald Katz was born in South Africa in 1939 to parents who emigrated from Germany and spent his first ten years there before settling permanently in the U.S. He attended public school in New York City and graduated from Queens College with a BA in mathematics and minors in physics and art.
Katz honed his skills studying painting and drawing at the Albert Pels Art School. The Art Students League, the School for Visual arts, Pratt Graphics Center, and Parsons/The New School. He was fortunate to study water color, with Barse Miller, drawing with Elias Friedensohn, and color and oil painting with John Ferren, among others. He has also studied fresco painting.
An epicure and an auto-didact, Katz's diverse interests include classical music, natural science, archeology, and art history. All of these subjects are reflected in his work. He has a well-trained ear, and an equally precise visual sense. The analogy between music and the visual world permeates Katz's thinking about art. His sense of color, composition, foreground, background and complexity all have musical corollaries. He looks back into the history of art and the world as a means to move forward. He is an artist always in motion, always focused on the next project, the next etching, the next painting.