Alex Katz

Alex Katz’ first exhibition was a failure

Alex Katz was born in New York on 24 July 1927. The son of a Russian immigrant with Jewish roots, he spent his childhood in the New York district of Queens. Economic competence and musical talent were combined in the family home: his father was a businessman by trade, his mother a qualified theater actress. Alex Katz himself became interested in art early on and from 1946 to 1949 studied at the Cooper Union Art school, a respected New York art academy dedicated to the French avant-garde. Afterwards he moved to Maine for a year to attend the School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan. The course was set for a successful career, but the first exhibition Alex Katz was able to hold in the New York Roko Gallery in 1954 proved to be a great failure.

Ahead of his time and still successful

Alex Katz did not allow himself to be distracted by this early dampener and stuck to his aim of establishing himself as an artist. Between 1960 and 1964 he designed costumes and stage sets for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and made it to the stage of the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. His perseverance paid off and in 1972 he received a Guggenheim scholarship for painting. The financial support enabled him to intensify his artistic efforts, and soon the longed-for success came. As a trailblazer for the Pop Art scene, he began exploring simplified forms, contrast-rich colour compositions and the precise play of light and shadow early on. He is fascinated by beautiful women and they have inspired him for many pictures – alongside his favourite model, Ada, whom he married and has loved and painted for 60 years, supermodels such as Christy Turlington were also objects of his art. True beauty would be eternal, says the artist with regard to his wife, who still looks as young and beautiful as ever in his current pictures.

One of the most important artists of our time

Nowadays, the price for Alex Katz’s art is increasing, due not only to its high artistic quality, but also to the fact that a large proportion of his work is owned by museums, such as the Albertina in Vienna. The artist himself bequeathed the museum sixty prints as a gesture of gratitude for the great recognition he has received in Europe. The year 2017 was a particular high point for the artist with many exhibitions and honours awarded on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Despite his great age, Katz still possesses a great freshness that is also characteristic of his work: his pictures and prints seem as if they have only just been designed by a younger artist – whereby many of the works of this exceptional artist were created before the work of Andy Warhol, whom Katz has long survived.

Alex Katz lives and works in New York and Maine.