Alex Katz facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alex Katz
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Katz in 2006
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| Born | July 24, 1927 New York City, U.S.
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| Education | The Cooper Union, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture |
| Known for | Sculpture, Painting, Printmaking |
| Movement | East Coast Figurative painting, New Realism, Pop Art |
Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is a famous American artist. He is known for his unique paintings, sculptures, and prints. Since 1951, his artwork has been shown in over 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group shows around the world. Katz is especially famous for his large paintings. These paintings have a bold, simple style and bright colors. Many people see his work as an early example of Pop Art.
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Early Life and Art Journey
Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on July 24, 1927. His family moved to St. Albans, Queens, when he was very young, and he grew up there.
From 1946 to 1949, Katz studied art at the Cooper Union in New York. After that, he went to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine from 1949 to 1950. Skowhegan was very important for him because it taught him to paint from real life. This way of painting, called plein air (painting outdoors), became a big part of his art. Katz said that painting outdoors gave him "a reason to devote my life to painting."
Every year, from early June to mid-September, Katz leaves his home in SoHo, New York. He moves to a old farmhouse in Lincolnville, Maine. He has spent his summers in Lincolnville since 1954. He also has a close connection with Colby College nearby.
In 1957, Katz met Ada Del Moro at an art gallery. She later became his wife and has been featured in many of his paintings. In 1960, they had their son, Vincent Katz. Vincent's two sons, Isaac and Oliver, have also appeared in Katz's artwork.
Katz has said that he destroyed many of his early paintings. He did this to find his own special style. He wanted to paint "faster than [he] can think." His art looks simple, but he says it's more about reducing things to their basic form. He doesn't like telling long stories in his paintings.
Katz's Artwork
Katz became very well known in the 1980s. His large paintings, with their bold simplicity and bright colors, are now seen as a step towards Pop Art.
Artistic Style
Katz's paintings are mostly portraits of people and landscapes. Since the 1960s, he has painted scenes of New York City, especially around his home in SoHo. He also paints landscapes of Maine, where he spends several months each year. His portraits often feature family members, artists, writers, and other people from New York society. He was inspired by the woodcut prints of a Japanese artist named Kitagawa Utamaro.
In the early 1960s, Katz started making very large paintings. He was influenced by movies, TV, and billboard ads. These paintings often show faces that are cut off dramatically. His wife, Ada Katz, has been the subject of over 250 portraits throughout his career.
To create one of his huge paintings, Katz first makes a small oil sketch. This sketch might take about an hour and a half. Then, he makes a detailed drawing in pencil or charcoal. After that, he makes a much bigger drawing, called a "cartoon." He might use a projector to make it bigger. He then transfers this large drawing to a huge canvas using a technique called "pouncing." This is an old method where powdered color is pushed through tiny holes in the drawing to mark the canvas. Finally, Katz mixes all his colors and gets his brushes ready. He then paints the entire canvas, which can be 12 feet wide by 7 feet high or even larger, in one long session of six or seven hours.
In the late 1950s, Katz also started painting on cut-out panels. These were first made of wood, then aluminum. He called them "cutouts." These artworks stand in space like sculptures, but they are flat like paintings. Some later cutouts are attached to special stands. They look like flickering images, especially with spotlights on them. Many of these cutouts are close-ups of faces or figures looking at each other.
After 1964, Katz began to paint groups of people more often. He continued painting these complex groups into the 1970s. These paintings showed the social world of artists, poets, and critics around him. He also designed sets and costumes for the dancer Paul Taylor in the early 1960s. He has painted many images of dancers.
After his exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, Katz focused more on landscapes. He wanted to create landscapes where you felt like you were "IN it." In the late 1980s, Katz started painting fashion models, including famous ones like Kate Moss. He said he was interested in fashion because it's always changing.
Printmaking
In 1965, Katz also started making many prints. He has created over 400 different print editions using techniques like lithography, etching, and silkscreen. Museums like the Albertina in Vienna and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, have full collections of his prints.
Public Artworks
In 1977, Katz was asked to create a huge artwork for a billboard in Times Square, New York City. This artwork was a long picture, or frieze, made of 23 portraits of women's heads. Each portrait was 20 feet tall! The billboard stretched 247 feet along two sides of a building.
In 1980, he was asked to create a large oil painting for a government building in New York City. This painting is 20 feet high and 20 feet wide. In 2005, Katz made another public artwork called Give Me Tomorrow. It was 28 feet tall and 53 feet long on a billboard in the East Village. Sign painters painted it by hand.
Working with Others
Katz has worked with poets and writers since the 1960s. He made special art editions that combined his images with poems from his friends, like Ted Berrigan. He also worked with the poet John Ashbery on publications. Other artists he worked with include Robert Creeley and Kenneth Koch. In 1962, Harper's Bazaar magazine used many of Katz's wooden cutouts for a fashion spread.
Many books have been written about Katz's art. These books explain his different art styles and how he creates his work.
Exhibitions
Since 1951, Alex Katz's art has been shown in over 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group shows. His first solo show was in New York in 1954. The Whitney Museum of American Art showed his prints in 1974. Later, in 1986, they had a large traveling show of his paintings and cutouts.
Katz has had many major shows at museums around the world. These include the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Saatchi Gallery in London. In 1998, a show of his landscape paintings was held at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. It featured almost 40 simple paintings of city and country scenes.
His art is currently shown by galleries like Gladstone Gallery in New York and Timothy Taylor Gallery in London. In 2022, a major show of his work was held at the Thyssen National Museum of Spain. This was the first time his art was shown in that country.
Art Collections
Katz's artwork is part of the collections in over 100 public museums worldwide. Some of these famous museums include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Gallery in London.
In 2011, Katz gave Rush (1971) to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This artwork is a series of 37 life-size cutout heads made of aluminum. It is displayed like a long picture in its own space.
Awards and Recognition
Throughout his career, Katz has received many awards. In 1972, he won the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Painting. He also received awards from the Pratt Institute and the Queens Museum of Art. In 1978, he got a U.S. government grant to visit the USSR for an art exchange.
Katz was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988. He also received honorary doctorates from Colby College (1984) and Colgate University (2005). In 1994, the Cooper Union Art School created the Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting. This position helps support painting education. In 2007, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Design.
In 1996, the Colby College Museum of Art opened a special wing dedicated to Katz. This large space features over 400 of his oil paintings, collages, and prints, which he donated to the museum. He has also bought many artworks by other artists for the museum.
In 1996, a video called Alex Katz: Five Hours was made. It showed how he created his painting January 3. In 2008, a documentary about him called What About Style? Alex Katz: a Painter's Painter was released.
Legacy
Many painters have been influenced by Alex Katz's work. These include artists like David Salle, Peter Halley, Richard Prince, Peter Doig, and Elizabeth Peyton. His art has also become very common in advertising and graphic design.
See Also
In Spanish: Alex Katz para niños
