Katja Oxman has been creating her dazzling, richly
textured, color etchings in her precise signature style for over forty
years. Born in 1942 in Munich, Germany, she came to the United States at
the age of nine and studied printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Art in Philadelphia on full scholarship from 1962 - 65 and pursued
further study at the Academy of Munich, Germany in 1966 where she
executed large scale woodcuts. In 1967 she was awarded a prestigious
Certificate in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art in London,
England where she specialized in etching.
Oxman's multi-plate aquatint etchings of the past twenty years
present complex still lifes of richly patterned Oriental rugs upon which
rest an overwhelming array of the artist's treasured objects:
opened letters and envelopes; picture postcards from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and other museums; birds,
feathers and nests; potted plants (usually in full bloom and grown by
the artist herself); oriental boxes and ripe fruits and vegetables. The
objects in her still lifes appear to levitate as a result of the
artist's tilted, nearly bird's eye perspective which alludes to Japanese
woodblock prints, yet a sense of stability and calm emanates from her
minutely detailed printed surfaces and their warm, earthy, subtle range
of tones. The thought provoking titles of her prints are often
quotations from Emily Dickinson verse and are often allusions to the
images' personal, secretive meanings.
Oxman has been honored with dozens of grants and awards including
three prizes from 1996 - 2000 from the National Academy of Design in New
York and a Maryland State Arts Council Grant in 2000 which funded in
part her recent full color catalogue of etchings from the past two
decades (Katja Oxman: Aquatints, essay by John Arthur, 2000). Her work
has been shown in numerous museum exhibitions including several at the
National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia and the National Academy of Design,
New York.
Her etchings are in the permanent collections of these museums as
well as the Philadelphia Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, the
Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Department of State,
the University of Delaware, the University of Maryland, the American
University, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and numerous corporate
and private collections in the United States and abroad. Steven Scott
Gallery has represented the artist since its opening in 1988.
There are currently over twenty different editions available by the
artist and all are available for viewing at the gallery. Sizes range
from 22" x 23" to 35" x 48" plus frames; prices generally range from
$700 to $3600.
Recent solo museum exhibitions have been held at the Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD (2014), Fort Wayne Museum of Art, IN, (2017) and Julio Fine Arts Gallery, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD (2018).
Recent Museum Accessions, 2015/2016:
Academy Art Museum, Easton MD
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Boise Art Museum, ID
Boston Atheneum, MA
Cleveland Museum of Art, OH
Des Moines Art Center, IA
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI
Flint Institute of Arts, MI
Fort Wayne Museum of Art, IN
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY
Huntington Museum of Art, WV
Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, MA
Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
Mt. Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
Portland Art Museum, OR
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
University of Maryland, University College, Adelphi, MD
Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD
West Virginia University, Museum of Art, Morgantown, WV
KATJA OXMAN: AQUATINTS
An Appreciation by Robert Kimbril, 2000
These exuberant prints by Katja Oxman are composed of broken
patterns--of images, objects, and plants--set against other broken
patterns.
The works show great refinement and beauty; they also conceal a
visual clash. When Oxman's images and patterns become reordered into her
composite works, a sort of art historical debate emerges wherein some of
the elements are deconstructed and reassembled into new configurations
while others are made to float forward and range themselves across a
broken surface as the last components of formal structure.
There may be a ruse or modernist bias in Oxman's placement of
abstract work: when she depicts objects by Rothko or Diebenkorn they
move into prominence under bright illumination. They represent points of
clarity. Further, their linear geometry reflects or deflects
compositional angles in Oxman's own architectural design. Other abstract
though less linear works, by de Kooning and others, stand in sharp
counterpoint to more traditional images represented in the background.
Oxman's etched surface, although it emphasizes certain abstract
formalities, exhibits no modern flatness: it remains visually porous and
can become permeable, opaque, or aqueous by turns. It can obscure, mute,
or intensify the visual charge of any part of the pattern by bringing it
to lurk behind another image or shift into composition with another
passage.
To "read" Oxman's work through these adroit visual shifts is rich,
complex, and utterly beguiling. The miracle of her work is that it has
been coaxed and conjured from wearisome and stubborn metal plates
