Alex Katz (American, born 1927) is the outstanding protagonist of figurative painting and one of our era's most acclaimed artists. In the late 1950s, the artist began to develop his mature style, characterised by elegance, simplicity, and stylised abstraction, which typifies his entire production. Alex Katz’s paintings are the result of a transformation of the three-dimensional world into simplified landscapes and portraits. He chooses to minimize details and shading and to present bold contours and blocks of colour. Indeed, Alex Katz’s art captures appearances and transposes them into paintings. Alex Katz’s portraits feature his own social milieu – friends, fellow artists, and most notably his wife Ada, whom he has painted more than 200 times. The artist’s quest to represent the experience of spectatorship is reflected in his portraits, also in his large landscapes, which he characterises as “environmental”. In his continued experimentation with different media, the artist creates what he calls “cut-outs”, freestanding sculptures that blur the line between painting and object. Back in 1965, Katz began experimenting with printmaking, which became a key aspect of his artistic practice. Alex Katz’s prints, which vary from lithographs, etchings, and silkscreens to linoleum cuts, have been exhibited in major museums, such as the Albertina Museum in Vienna, which, in 2010, showed a retrospective survey of over 150 graphic works, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in an exhibition in 2012. The transposition of his notable paintings into prints allows Alex Katz to make his art more accessible to his collectors, thereby maintaining the same allure and stylish power as his painted works.

Alex Katz

With flat planes of rich, lovely color, Alex Katz’s landscapes and portraits evoke the smooth aesthetics of advertising billboards and film.

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Alex Katz's Blue Hat (2004) is a perfect example of his unique style, which has had a lasting impact on contemporary figurative art. The picture, viewed up close like a cinematic snapshot, draws us into an intimate connection with the figure. Katz intentionally avoids traditional techniques like texture or perspective, choosing instead to focus on flatness and colour to convey meaning.&nbsp;For him, colour is a way to express emotion, and he felt that to truly experience the vibrancy of these hues, everything that isn't colour had to be toned down. In the painting, for instance, two sailboats are barely noticeable on the horizon, and the only real decoration is the woman’s headscarf.&nbsp;The portrayed woman is Katz’s wife, Ada, who has appeared in many of his works over the years. The simplicity of the composition brings about a sense of fleetingness, almost like a bittersweet memory — a story that feels just beyond our reach. This feeling is reinforced by Ada's uncertain expression, which feels both mysterious and intriguing. She gazes toward something behind the viewer, making us wonder what she’s looking at. Katz strikes a perfect balance here, creating a sense of realism while deliberately leaving out anything that could offer easy answers.&nbsp;What we’re left with is a feeling of mystery, with the figures caught between revealing and hiding their true selves.

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—Alex Katz