Alex Katz

"Katz does not paint, Katz remembers Katz's paintings are so precise and so sketchy as the memories are... And as memories, this artist loves the instant, the detail..." these words were at the German Magazine DIE ZEIT, referring to the New Yorker artist, whose works confront figure and surface moving between modern realism and pro art.

Alex Katz (American, born in 1927) is best known for his large-sized portraits, which he did in a very eye-catching style. Katz was born in Brooklyn and visited the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, later on he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine, USA. At the time when the abstract expressionism had its highlight in the US, the artist was developing his most representative works, his paintings in the 50s show fast and expressive brush strokes, influenced by artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. In the late 50s and early 60s his tendency it to simplify shapes, seeking carefully the brightness,  flatness and colors. With his loyalty to the figurative and introducing the two dimension´s surfaces Katz counts as a precursor of Pop Art. 

Katz also worked on collages, printed graphics and scene pictures and concentrated during the 70s with these media and in the production of free standing sculptural collages. Later on appear the big landscapes that attract the viewer in their atmosphere. Until today, he paints from naturalistic themes.

Solo exhibition were hosted by institutions like the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum or the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in Spain. Katz has received many awards and honors for his work, like the Guggenheim Grant or the membership at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Alex Katz lives in New York and Maine.