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 1990 as part of the Alex and Ada Portfolio, Green Jacket is a rare example of a self-portrait within Katz’s oeuvre. The print is based on an earlier painting now held in the permanent collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art. Produced as a thirty-eight 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 folds of the jacket and the contours of the face. Green Jacket exemplifies Katz’s enduring engagement with portraiture and his ability to transform moments of everyday observation into images of striking formal elegance.