Alex Katz

Fine Artist

• Born: July 24, 1927
• Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York

ARTIST

Katz painted from real life in a time when figurative art was not popular. His style has some elements of abstract, pop, and minimalism, but he worked on the outskirts of the artistic community.

AREA OF ACHIEVEMENT: Art

Early Life

Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn in July 1927, to immigrant parents. His father was born in Lida, a small town in Russia, where he studied to be a rabbi but later lost interest in working as a religious leader. He moved from his hometown to Berlin, where he lived for a short time before coming to the United States in 1922. Katz’s mother was also from Russia and spent time performing on the Yiddish stage in Russia and in the United States before she married. Katz’s parents were significant influences on developing his interest in art. As a child, Katz and his father would create watercolor paintings together. However, in 1944, Katz’s father was killed in a car accident.

Katz attended P.S. 130 in Queens, but later he persuaded his parents to allow him to study at a vocational high school, where he could devote half of his day to studying art. While in high school, he was interested in advertisement images and aspired to be a commercial artist. Upon graduating from high school in 1945, he joined the Navy as a way to avoid the draft, but he served only for a short time following the end of World War II. When he returned home, he applied to and was accepted at Cooper Union, an art college located in lower Manhattan, where Katz continued with his advertising studies but spent more of his time painting because he found it interesting. After completing his second year at Cooper Union, he dropped his aspirations to become a commercial artist and focused all his energy on painting. He studied at Cooper Union from 1946 to 1949 and then attended the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine until 1950.

Life’s Work

While in school, Katz decided to create only figurative art, and then he began searching for a style to go along with the subject matter. At the time, most of the emerging art was abstract in style, so Katz had no mentors who could teach him about painting from real life. One of the artists who did inspire Katz was Jackson Pollock, whose drip paintings prompted Katz to find his own style of painting. From 1955 to 1960, Katz created collages as a disciplinary practice for himself. His phase of experimentation with collages was successful, because it allowed Katz to discover a personal style from which to create portraits and gave him the confidence to continue to pursue his career in figurative art. Katz’s first one-person show came in 1954 at the Roko Gallery in New York.

As Katz began to settle into his style of painting, he moved closer to his subjects and started including details, such as gesture, dress, and facial expression. One of the first paintings in which this new tendency is apparent is Ada with White Dress (1958). His wife, Ada, became the subject of many of his paintings; aside from commissioned paintings, dancer pictures, and occasional landscapes, the subjects in Katz’s paintings are mostly members of his family and significant friends. His wife is one of his most frequent subjects, and his son, Vincent, also appears several times in his work.

Katz was received well throughout the 1960s but was never considered a mainstream artist. He was different from his peers at the time because of his decision to paint only in a figurative style. It was not until the 2000s that Katz’s art gained widespread appreciation, and in 2007 he had a major solo show at the New York State Museum. It was at this time that Katz was recognized as one of the great American artists. His work and style are distinctive because of his use of bright and bold colors and because of the particular attention he pays to detail in his paintings. A common characteristic of his paintings is the sophisticated women subjects, although men do appear as subjects. Katz occasionally painted landscapes.

Katz continued to paint in the 2020s, despite his advancing age. In 2024, four of his paintings were featured in the exhibit Alex Katz: Seasons at the Museum of Modern Art. Katz painted these works and nearly one hundred others in his studio since 2022. The paintings in the exhibit show the changing seasons.

Significance

Although Katz was painting at the same time as some of the great postmodern artists, he was never associated with them because of his different style of art. At the time, the majority of popular art being created was abstract, pop, or minimalist; Katz held steadfastly to his figurative style. Some elements of popular art styles were incorporated into his paintings, but his works were never welcomed as readily as those of other artists until the 2000s, when his work gained widespread acceptance. As of 2022, his work had been the subject of approximately 200 solo exhibitions and 500 group exhibitions worldwide and was part of the collections of more than 100 public institutions.

Bibliography

Battcock, Gregory. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: Dutton, 1968. Print.

Blazwick, Iwona, Robert Storr, and Carter Ratcliff. Alex Katz. Rev. ed. London: Phaidon, 2014. Print.

Edgers, Geoff. "Alex Katz at 88: Portrait of the Artist Unable to Slow Down." Washington Post. Washington Post, 24 July 2015. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.

Gamerman, Ellen. "A Look at Alex Katz's Late Career." Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones, 30 Apr. 2015. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.

Katz, Alex. "'The World Caught Up with Me': Painter Alex Katz Continues Prolific Work." Interview by Phil Hirschkorn. PBS Newshour. PBS, 19 Sept. 2015. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.

Katz, Alex, and Vincent Katz. Invented Symbols: An Art Autobiography. New York: Charta, 2012. Print.

Kuspit, Donald B., and Alex Katz. Alex Katz: Night Paintings. New York: Abrams, 1991. Print.

Peiffer, Prudence. "A Seasoned Eye: Alex Katz Explains His Idea of Painting Eternity. MoMA, July 2, 2024, www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1095. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.