Alex Katz American, b. 1927
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Alex Katz is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. Born in Brooklyn, New York on July 24, 1927, he studied in New York and in Skowhegan, Maine between 1946 and 1950. In the early 1950s he was influenced by the work of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, and he produced swiftly executed pictures of trees and various works based on photographs. In the mid 1950s, working from life, Katz painted spare, brightly coloured landscapes, interiors, and figures. Soon afterward he also produced simplified images in collage. These early works emphasized the flatness of the picture plane while remaining representational, and this insistence on figuration placed him outside the contemporary avant-garde mainstream, in which abstraction and chance were key qualities. Katz developed his style in the portrait works of ordinary people from the late 1950s, such as Ada with White Dress (1958). This resolution of the demands of formalism and representation looked forward to the Pop Art of the following decade.
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"[Katz] has always had his own direction, which has not been the direction of mainstream art in any of the last seven decades. In a Katz painting, style-the way it's painted-is the primary element. His confident, crisply articulated technique makes us see the world the way he sees it, clear and up close, with all but the most essential details pared away." - Calvin Tomkins
Katz's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Detroit Institute of Art, The Tate Gallery, The Brooklyn Museum, Museo Rufino Tamayo, The Guggenheim Bilbao, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Institute, among others. -
Works
Alex Katz American, b. 1927
Samantha, 198732-Color Silkscreen on paper66 1/8 x 28 1/8 in.
168 x 71.4 cm.Edition of 80Signed and numbered along lower marginFurther images
Samantha is a rare edition executed in 1987, the work is a technically rich thirty-two colour silkscreen. Since emerging in the postwar period, Alex Katz (b. 1927) has developed a...Samantha is a rare edition executed in 1987, the work is a technically rich thirty-two colour silkscreen. Since emerging in the postwar period, Alex Katz (b. 1927) has developed a highly recognizable visual language defined by flattened forms, crisp contours, and an economy of detail. By the 1960s, his work stood in deliberate contrast to the dominant trends of abstraction, reaffirming the continued relevance of figurative painting within contemporary art.
Printmaking has occupied an important role within Katz’s practice since his student years at Cooper Union, where he studied in the late 1940s. Although painting remained his primary focus, he increasingly embraced printmaking as a means of extending and refining his distinctive aesthetic. Working across silkscreen, lithography, etching, and woodcut, Katz approached printmaking not as a reproductive medium, but as an independent site of formal and technical experimentation. Created in 1987, the work is rendered as a thirty-two colour silkscreen, the work reflects the technically rigorous process required to achieve Katz’s signature clarity of image. The careful layering and precise registration of each colour results in a composition that appears visually effortless despite its considerable complexity. Against a muted grey ground, the figure confronts the viewer with quiet confidence. Broad planes of colour and sharply defined contours reduce the image to its essential forms, while subtle tonal variations articulate the contours of the face.
Publications
