Clement Greenberg

Herbert Katzman: Skyscapes Painter

Filed under: Art

Glorious Sky: Herbert Katzman's New York at the Museum of the City of New York is the first major museum retrospective of this American artist. Who's Katzman? Never heard of him --- not surprising as he is hardly a household name. Yet in the 1950s Katzman was considered one of America's best artists. He was the one to watch exhibiting along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. But like Edward Hopper a generation earlier, Katzman was a figurative painter at a time when artistic diversity was on the wane. Katzman peaked in terms of public awareness in the 1950s. After that, he was in effect doomed to semi-obscurity by the overwhelming preference of art critics, notably Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, for Abstract Expressionism. And collectors followed suit chasing after the big names favored by critics. Although he was once considered one of the most promising painters of his time, Katzman (1923-2004) by the 1960s was deemed unfashionable.

Tags: art, Clement Greenberg, figurative art, Harold Rosenberg, new york city, NYC paintings