Alex Katz, one of the most celebrated artists of the past hundred years.
Alex Katz is known for his huge canvases and bright, bold planes of colour that staunchly refuse to be defined by genre; though his paintings often have the scale of Abstract Expressionism, they are infused with a Pop Art aesthetic that is unique to Katz.
The artist began working in the 1950s, and since then, he has firmly established himself as a pillar of contemporary art. Though Katz’s main medium is painting, he is also a prolific printmaker. Indeed, prints account for over 70% of his work sold at auction, and the majority of them sell for between £1,000 and £5,000.
Alex Katz’s work often highlights the poetry, tragedy, and beauty of daily life. As such, it is interesting to know some things about his life when considering his art. Below are six things you might not have known about Alex Katz.
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He Is Almost 100 Years Old
Alex Katz was born on 24 July 1927, on the eve of the Great Depression, but at the age of 97, he is continuing to paint vigorously, and he has no intentions of stopping any time soon. Though he never achieved the astronomical fame of some of his contemporaries – such as Andy Warhol – Alex Katz has successfully defined his own unique style and secured his reputation as a tremendously important modern painter.
Partly, this is because he has never ceased experimenting or producing new work, and he recently stated that he is “still taking risks” with his art. The risks seem to be paying off; in 2022, he had a major retrospective at the Guggenheim, and many of his most popular prints in today’s market are fairly recent creations, including Flowers from 2021, and Blue Umbrella 2 from 2020.
His Most Expensive Prints Sold For Over £86,000
Black Dress is a series of prints from 2015 which highlights Katz’s technical skill and his ability to instil superficially similar images with subtle differences. For these prints, Katz asked nine of his female friends to model for him, each wearing their own variation of a little black dress and black heels. He then had them pose in almost exactly the same position, and each is painted against a vivid yellow background.
But what could be made boring by a lesser artist is rendered visually brilliant by Katz. The repetitive nature of the prints allows him to subtly convey different personalities and emotions in a way that is both thoughtful and pleasing to the eye. It is no surprise, then, that Black Dress is Katz’s most expensive print to date, having been sold by Sotheby’s in October 2016 for £86,079.
Black Dress Portfolio Sold by Sotheby’s in 2016
His Wife Is His Model
Alex Katz met the biologist Ada Del Moro in 1957, and the pair married three months later. Both now in their mid-nineties, Alex and Ada Katz have been married for over 65 years, and Ada continues to serve as a model and muse for her husband.
A two-decade expanse of their long marriage was documented in Katz’s 1990 print series, Alex & Ada, the 1960s to the 1980s, which was sold by Sotheby’s in April 2023 for £44,167. Ada has appeared in innumerable Alex Katz prints and paintings, and she is the subject of some of his best and most famous work, including Blue Umbrella 2, a print of which was sold by Phillips in October 2023 for £49,343.
He Paints En Plein Air
Alex Katz trained as an artist after leaving school, and from 1949 to 1950, he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. The institution favoured plein air painting (painting outdoors), and working from life; both of these were pivotal for the young Katz. The artist later said that working en plein air provided him with “a reason to devote my life to painting”, and it has remained an integral part of his practice ever since.
Though Katz’s printmaking is a more considered, calculated process, the paintings and sketches he has done en plein air often inspire the finished product, and Katz’s prints of outdoor subjects (such as Flowers and Gray Day) are highly sought after in today’s art market.
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine
He Works Quickly
Working en plein air has its difficulties; the light changes constantly, and in Katz’s opinion, one usually only has about “15 minutes to make a sketch” before it shifts. He’s stated that “then what you do is make a sketch of what you remember of this moment. Then you go out and make another sketch, and then you paint a memory, what you think it looked like.” His work, therefore, is often a mixture of imagination, memory, reality, and feeling, giving his pieces a unique, unforgettable quality that help account for his popularity today.
He’s Interested In Capturing Everyday Moments
One of the most beautiful aspects of Katz’s work is the way he tries to capture the feeling of a moment, then convey that emotion in his art. Interestingly, though, this doesn’t have to be about grand gestures or monumental actions; instead, Katz focuses on moments of everyday life, trying to capture “the sensation of seeing things for the first time.”
He has stated his art is about the “immediate present”. There’s something inherently beautiful about that idea, and Katz executes it brilliantly. Prints such as Gray Day or those in the Alex & Ada, the 1960s to the 1980s series are over three decades old now, yet they still retain an element of the immediate, meaning the moments they represent are captured and suspended in time forever.
