- 10
Alex Katz
bidding is closed
Description
- Alex Katz
- Ada 2
- oil on linen
- 127 by 101.6 cm.; 50 by 40in.
- Executed in 2012.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2012
Exhibited
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition, 2013, p. 147, illustrated in colour
Catalogue Note
A seminal figure in Postwar American Art, Alex Katz’s distinctive style and decades-long career have made him one of the most recognizable and widely acclaimed artists of his generation. Though he emerged in the New York art world in the 1950s during the height of Abstract Expressionism, Katz has been dedicated to figurative painting throughout his career, anticipating Pop Art with his bold use of color and stylized renderings of humans, animals, and landscapes. Katz’s bold paintings are defined by their flatness of colour and form, their economy of line and their cool but seductive emotional detachment. Working across categories as diverse as portraiture, land- and seascape and life study, Katz renders his personal reality in his canvases, yet simultaneously successfully portrays everyday America in times of leisure and recreation.
Many of Katz's portraits depict his friends and family; a recurring subject is his wife and artistic muse Ada, whose iconic image has appeared in numerous works since the start of his career in the 1950’s, linking the work of the artist to a centuries-long lineage of artists who have found a muse in their partners. Ada is almost always depicted against a solid field of rich colour, dramatically cropped and flatly painted on large scale canvases. Reminiscent of Matisse’s work, Katz’s own portraits are acute explorations of flatness, light and colour. Katz describes himself as a cool painter, favouring a deliberately detached and impersonal look about his paintings and their subjects. These strategies inflict a cinematic feel to Katz’s work, which takes cues from commercial imagery employed in billboards: Katz’s subjects appear flawless, slender and with a crisp, clean appearance, usually involved in some leisure activity.
The images with which we are presented are almost as vibrant as postcards; bright colours and carefully delineated contours capturing the spirit of a particular moment in time. Seemingly allied with Pop Art, the flatness and detachment which is so synonymous with Katz’s work belongs nonetheless to a different tradition in painting. Where Warhol and Lichtenstein deliberately appropriated from the mass media and presented an underlying ironic commentary, Katz’s paintings can be seen as the progenitors of New Realism, where careful observation of the subject is then translated onto canvas in a crisp, uninflected manner.
While depictions of Ada populate Katz’s work throughout his career, as well as those of friends and other members of the family such as his son Vincent - shown here in Vincent Walking - Katz focused his attention on large landscape paintings later on in his career. Evinced here in White Pines 2, Meadow and Yellow Leaves #5, these landscapes, which he characterises as ‘environmental’, favour loser brushstrokes and all-over compositions that seem to continue beyond the edges of the canvas. Here, Katz focuses on details of landscapes rather than offering a complete view of a scene, allowing the viewer to wander their eye and appreciate the nuances in colour and texture.
Since the 1950s, Alex Katz’s work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions around the world. His work can be found in nearly 100 public collections worldwide including: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Saatchi Gallery, London; Tate St. Ives; Turner Contemporary,and The Guggenheim, Bilbao.
Many of Katz's portraits depict his friends and family; a recurring subject is his wife and artistic muse Ada, whose iconic image has appeared in numerous works since the start of his career in the 1950’s, linking the work of the artist to a centuries-long lineage of artists who have found a muse in their partners. Ada is almost always depicted against a solid field of rich colour, dramatically cropped and flatly painted on large scale canvases. Reminiscent of Matisse’s work, Katz’s own portraits are acute explorations of flatness, light and colour. Katz describes himself as a cool painter, favouring a deliberately detached and impersonal look about his paintings and their subjects. These strategies inflict a cinematic feel to Katz’s work, which takes cues from commercial imagery employed in billboards: Katz’s subjects appear flawless, slender and with a crisp, clean appearance, usually involved in some leisure activity.
The images with which we are presented are almost as vibrant as postcards; bright colours and carefully delineated contours capturing the spirit of a particular moment in time. Seemingly allied with Pop Art, the flatness and detachment which is so synonymous with Katz’s work belongs nonetheless to a different tradition in painting. Where Warhol and Lichtenstein deliberately appropriated from the mass media and presented an underlying ironic commentary, Katz’s paintings can be seen as the progenitors of New Realism, where careful observation of the subject is then translated onto canvas in a crisp, uninflected manner.
While depictions of Ada populate Katz’s work throughout his career, as well as those of friends and other members of the family such as his son Vincent - shown here in Vincent Walking - Katz focused his attention on large landscape paintings later on in his career. Evinced here in White Pines 2, Meadow and Yellow Leaves #5, these landscapes, which he characterises as ‘environmental’, favour loser brushstrokes and all-over compositions that seem to continue beyond the edges of the canvas. Here, Katz focuses on details of landscapes rather than offering a complete view of a scene, allowing the viewer to wander their eye and appreciate the nuances in colour and texture.
Since the 1950s, Alex Katz’s work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions around the world. His work can be found in nearly 100 public collections worldwide including: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Saatchi Gallery, London; Tate St. Ives; Turner Contemporary,and The Guggenheim, Bilbao.