In the crowded field of postwar abstraction, Robert Natkin’s lifetime exploration of color and light set him apart. His poetic paintings combine a post-Impressionist color sensibility with the lyricism of Paul Klee, a major influence on the artist. Celebrated in his lifetime even as abstraction fell in and out of favor, Natkin remained committed to his vision and produced cohesive and challenging work throughout his career. The 1980s was a decade of supreme output by the artist and the starting point for his last great series of paintings, the Hitchcock Series.
With weekly trips to the movie theater as a young child, Natkin became a cinema devotee and an ardent admirer of Alfred Hitchcock. The Hitchcock Series is an homage to the auteur whose films, despite their entertaining plots, teem with darker undertones and contradictions. In describing his own series, Natkin pointed out how the director succeeded in depicting and romanticizing the complexities of the human condition. Like Hitchcock, Natkin believed pleasure and beauty were forever intertwined with mystery and paradox.
