Alex Katz

Alex Katz (*1927 in New York) is one of the most important American artists of our time. He is a central figure of the American self-reflexive painting tradition, for which the assonance of rationality, sensuality and abstraction is characteristic. The artist depicts seemingly dispassionate motifs from the life of the New York intellectual and art scene and the well situated leisure society in an iconic fashion in monumental formats. Another focus is on the representation of simultaneously immediate and unapproachable natural idylls of Maine in the north-eastern United States. On the occasion of his most recent gift of 60 works, the ALBERTINA Museum is presenting its entire collection of drawings and cards, as well as a selection of the paintings of Alex Katz.

In his paintings, Alex Katz achieves this cool aesthetic of an immediate present, which he has found in the observation of light and surfaces while drawing. The liveliness of the expressive line of the previous drawings is maintained, reduced and perfected by the various transfer techniques, in the gestural painting style of the paintings.