Alex Katz is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. Born in Brooklyn, New York on July 24, 1927, he studied in New York and in Skowhegan, Maine between 1946 and 1950. In the early 1950s he was influenced by the work of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, and he produced swiftly executed pictures of trees and various works based on photographs. In the mid 1950s, working from life, Katz painted spare, brightly coloured landscapes, interiors, and figures. Soon afterward he also produced simplified images in collage. These early works emphasized the flatness of the picture plane while remaining representational, and this insistence on figuration placed him outside the contemporary avant-garde mainstream, in which abstraction and chance were key qualities. Katz developed his style in the portrait works of ordinary people from the late 1950s, such as Ada with White Dress (1958). This resolution of the demands of formalism and representation looked forward to the Pop Art of the following decade. "[Katz] has always had his own direction, which has not been the direction of mainstream art in any of the last seven decades. In a Katz painting, style-the way it's painted-is the primary element. His confident, crisply articulated technique makes us see the world the way he sees it, clear and up close, with all but the most essential details pared away." Katz's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Detroit Institute of Art, The Tate Gallery, The Brooklyn Museum, Museo Rufino Tamayo, The Guggenheim Bilbao, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Institute, among others.

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Exhibitions

Fairs

Public Collections

The Addison Gallery, Andover
Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens
The High Museum of Art, Atlanta
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick
Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
The Albert & Vera List of Arts Center, M.I.T., Cambridge
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Chicago Arts Club, Chicago
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Denver Art Museum, Denver
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines
The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth
Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro
The Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford
Honolulu Academy of Art, Honolulu
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Rice Museum, Rice University, Houston
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City
Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence
Olin Art Center, Bates College, Lewiston
The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Madison Art Center, Madison
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu
Rahr West Museum, Manitowoc
Miami-Dade Community College, Miami
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
The Brooklyn Museum, New York
The Grey Art Gallery, NYU Art Collection, New York University, New York
The Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Jewish Museum, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Equitable Life Insurance, New York
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York
Exxon Corporate Collection, New York
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha
The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Portland Museum of Art, Portland
Portland Art Museum, Portland
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond
Meadow Brook Art Gallery, Oakland University, Rochester
William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City
Everhart Museum, Scranton
Virginia Wright Fund, Seattle
Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City
Joe & Emily Loe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse
University of South Florida Art Galleries, Tampa
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute of Art, Utica
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem
The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester
Essel Collection, Vienna
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna
Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Powerlong Museum, Shanghai
Saatchi Collection, London
Tate, London
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough
Atenium Taidemuso, Helsinki
Sarah Hilden Museum of Art, Tampere
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
Foundation d'Art Contemporaine, Paris
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Neue Galerie, Aachen
Altana Haus Museum, Bad Hamburg
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden
Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Staedel Museum, Frankfurt
Collection Westdeutsch Spielbank, Cologne
Museum Kurhaus, Kleve
Museum Würth, Künzelsau
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Moderne Kunst, Munich
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
The Schaufler Foundation, Sindelfingen
IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
MART Museo d’Arte di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto
Hiroshima City Museum, Hiroshima
Iwaki City Art Museum, Iwaki
Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyonqiu-Shi
Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art Luxembourg, Luxembourg City
Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo
Museum of Contemporary Art – MAC/CCB, Lisbon
Berardo Collection, Sintra
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva
Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Art, Lausanne
Daros Collection, Zurich
Kunsthaus, Zürich
Frisia Museum, Spanbroek
Scheringa Museum Voor, Spanbroek
Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar