Morris Katz (1931-2010) Oil on Canvas Board Untitled Landscape. From one of many of Morris's Instant Art Shows. Signed and dated 1976. In wood frame with linen liner. In frame 27 1/2"x31"x2". Weight 8 pds 5 oz. On May 9th, 1988, the New York artist set a new world record by painting a 12- by 16-inch canvas of a child in the snow in just half a minute. (It took an additional eight seconds to frame it.) And that wasn't the only distinction granted to Katz by the Guinness Book of World Records, his name appeared alongside Pablo Picasso’s under the heading for “Most Prolific Painters.” The Spanish master is estimated to have completed some 13,500 paintings in his life; when Katz died in 2010 at age 78, he was credited with 225,000. Katz’s preposterously productive career began in the small Polish village where he was born in 1932. He started studying under a German painter at age 13, but following World War II he earned a diploma in carpentry instead. In 1949, at the age of 17, he travelled to the United States. It was there that he picked up a paintbrush again, while studying at the Art Students League of New York and showing in the Village. “Soon, I decided I was good enough, compared to others, excellent enough, to make my living as an artist,” he said .Katz branded his method as “instant art.” Charles Salzberg, writing in New York magazine in 1978, urged readers, “Think of him, if you will, as the McDonald’s of the art world”, fast, cheap, and ubiquitous. It was during those years that he developed the techniques that would eventually land him in the record books. He tossed out his paintbrushes and replaced them with palette knives and toilet paper, which he used to stipple the paint. “Soon I picked up speed,” Katz said. “If you know which way you're travelling, then you can run.” He made art in bulk, buying up canvases by the thousands and paint by the gallon. He went through some 10,000 rolls of toilet paper per year; he often wore out palette knives. His act was ready-made for television; he appeared on 60 Minutes, David Letterman, and Oprah, among other programs. And Katz didn't just make instant art, he taught it as well. In 1987, the New Yorker sent a writer to attend one of his speed-painting classes at the Notre Dame School on West 79th Street. A dozen eager students watched in admiration as he whipped up a mountain landscape, asking for advice on how, exactly, to hold their toilet paper for maximum artistic effect.

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