Considered the forerunner of Pop art, Alex Katz’s simplistic portraiture and renderings of the American landscape are easily recognizable by the use of flat color and the reduction of line. Expanding on these themes, Katz began to focus his large-scale paintings on the figures and scenery at the beach in the late 1990s. Based on his own observations, Katz first created smaller oil paintings, done with a rougher, more painterly execution, revealing a different side of his style. As demonstrated in ‘Playa del Carmen’, Katz’s preliminary paint sketches provide an honest representation of the colors, light, and feelings of the location and the experience before they are translated into his characteristic, flat compositions.
Alex Katz (born 1927) is one of the most important and influential American artists of the past fifty years. Concentrating on portrait and landscape motifs, Katz has developed a distinctive method in his paintings and prints that is characterized by a symbiotic relationship between abstraction, sensuousness, and rationality. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Katz attended The Cooper Union, New York, NY before studying painting at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work continues to be extensively exhibited, with recent solo shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2012); Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany (2012); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2011); Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France (2011); Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, NY (2011); Galería Javier López–Mário Sequeira, Madrid, Spain (2011); Albertina, Vienna, Austria (2010); and National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2010).
Selected Public Collections:
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Tate Gallery, London, UK
Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan
