Alex Katz
(New York, USA 1927)
Alex Katz was born in New Work in 1927 to Russian Jewish immigrants. He received his artistic training at the Cooper Union Art School in New York and later at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Katz was a member of the board of directors of this school from 1962 to 1979.
Until the 1950s, Alex Katz worked in the style of abstract expressionism until he became one of the first artists of a time to use a figurative style of representational painting. Since then, Alex Katz has artistically followed the path of modern realism and pop art.
In 1954 Alex Katz had his first solo exhibition at the Roko Gallery in New York, which was not yet a success. Images from modern media (e.g., advertising for the beverage manufacturer Pepsi and the cigarette company Lucky Strike) inspired Katz in the choice of motif. The first large formats appeared in the early 1960s. Film images by directors such as Ingmar Bergman were also a source of inspiration for Katz's art. His wife Ada has been a popular model for her husband's work for decades.
The motifs of his pictures are figures, landscapes and buildings in a bold manner of representation, which makes his pictures appear like advertising posters - a typical feature of Pop Art. Alex Katz places style over narrative and psychological elements, facial expressions are reduced to the essentials.
Katz paints his portraits against a plain background. In addition to painting, Katz also devoted himself to printmaking, Pop Art's favorite medium, which the artist mastered with virtuosity.
In 1972 Katz received the Guggenheim Fellowship for painting.
The works of the 1980s show Alex Katz's devotion to the world of fashion design, and large-format landscapes are also created.
In 1994 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Design and that same year he was appointed visiting professor at the Cooper Union Art School, funded by the sale of ten paintings donated by Katz.
In the 21st century, Alex Katz expanded his repertoire to include flower paintings, depictions of dancers and nude figures. Alex Katz had already exhibitions at – among others - the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, the Hamburger Deichtorhallen, the Saatchi Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, both London, the museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Tate St. Ives, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Tate Liverpool, the Museum Brandhorst in Munich, the Musée de l'Orangerie and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, both in Paris, the Albertina in Vienna and the Fosun Foundation in Shanghai.
In Austria, the Albertina and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna own works by Alex Katz.
Alex Katz lives and works in New York and Maine.