Figurative painting

Albertina [ENA] The famous Viennese Museum Albertina is celebrating the 95th anniversary of the famous figurative painter Alex Katz. The exhibition includes paintings from various periods of his life and is ongoing until the 4th of June 2023. Alex Katz is one of the most famous contemporary painters, in the same row as Maria Lassnig, Georg Baselitz, Valie Export and Arnulf Rainer.

Alex Katz is an American painter who is best known for his iconic portraits and landscapes that are defined by their bold, flat colors and stylized, streamlined compositions. Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Katz grew up in a family of artists and was exposed to art from an early age. He attended Cooper Union in Manhattan and later studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Katz's early works were heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism, a movement that dominated the art world in the 1950s. However, Katz eventually developed his own unique style that focused on the representation of the human figure and the natural world.

His portraits, in particular, are celebrated for their elegant simplicity and their ability to capture the essence of the sitter in just a few deft strokes. One of Katz's most famous works is "The Black Dress," a portrait of his wife Ada Katz that was painted in 1960. The painting features Ada wearing a simple black dress and sitting against a bright yellow background. The composition is striking in its simplicity, and the bold colors and strong lines of the painting are characteristic of Katz's style.

Katz has had a long and successful career, and his works are featured in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and retrospectives, and his influence on contemporary art cannot be overstated. In addition to his painting, Katz has also worked in other mediums, including printmaking, sculpture, and collage. He has collaborated with a number of poets and writers, including his wife Ada, on a series of prints that combine his images with their words. Overall, Alex Katz is a major figure in the art world whose contributions have helped shape the course of contemporary art.