Alex katz paintings portraits
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Primarily known for his paintings and prints, Katz utilizes bold simplicity, heightened color, and economy of line to create stylized portraits and landscapes that are defined by their hard-edge and flatness of form. He is represented by numerous galleries internationally.
Alex Katz was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who had lost a factory he owned in Russia to the Soviet revolution.
He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colours are now seen as precursors to Pop Art.
Katz's paintings are divided almost equally into the genres of portraiture and landscape. Indeed, rather than being simple remakes, the prints he makes of his paintings count as genuine artistic endeavors of their own right, which makes them both offshoots of his original artistic execution and works of their own.
All of Katz’s portraits involve a degree of idealization and generalization, particularly those depicting Ada. Invariably serene, stylish, and introspective, equally parts bemused and inscrutable, the Ada of Katz’s painting is more icon than flesh. Katz was further attracted to the idea that prints could serve as “surrogate paintings,” as he refers to them, rather than ordinary duplications of his painted works.
In 1928 the family moved to St. Albans, Queens, where Katz grew up.
From 1946 to 1949 Katz studied at The Cooper Union in New York, and from 1949 to 1950 he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Ada became his most prolific subject as Katz completed over two hundred portraits of his partner throughout the years.
As for particular subject matter, I don't like narratives, basically."
Katz achieved great public prominence in the 1980s. Katz is a long-term resident of Manhattan, and has summered in Lincolnville, Maine since the 1950s.
From 1955 to 1959, Katz made small collages of figures in landscapes from hand-colored strips of delicately cut paper.
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Describing his personal encounters with the work of over 90 key artists, Katz's observations offer a fluent, vivid, and incisive view, making Looking at Art with Alex Katz the perfect guide both for those looking for an introduction to the world of visual art, and anyone looking for a fresh view on their favorite artist.
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We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. Since the 1950s, he worked to create art more freely in the sense that he tried to paint "faster than [he] can think." His works seem simple, but according to Katz they are more reductive, which is fitting to his personality.
In 2010, his printmaking was the focus of a retrospective survey Alex Katz: Prints, a solo retrospective of over 150 graphic works at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria. In the 1980s, Katz took on fashion imagery before focusing his attention on large landscape paintings in the late 1980s and 1990s. Each print offers Katz an opportunity to rework an image without the hit-or-miss stakes of painting.
A key source of inspiration is the woodcuts produced by Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro.
In the early 1960s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces. Using the multiplicity of prints, Katz is able to reimagine details of his painted works, altering color, scale and detail.
In 1960, Katz had his first (and only) son, Vincent Katz. Katz pre-mixes all his colors and gets his brushes ready. 1927, Brooklyn, NY) is an important American figurative artist associated with the Pop Art movement. The effect is exaggerated here thanks to the composition, which alludes to a long tradition of painted portraits of seated subjects by artists such as Raphael, Velazquez, and Rembrandt.
Artwork Details
- Title:
Ada
- Artist:
Alex Katz (American, born Brooklyn, New York, 1927)
- Date:
1957
- Medium:
Oil on Masonite
- Dimensions:
32 1/4 × 24 in.
In 1965, the artist returned to printmaking with screenprints composed of large swaths of flat color.
Katz’ prints are often based on his paintings.