Artist

Alex Katz

born New York City 1927
Media - portrait_image_113214.jpg - 90147
Courtesy Alex Katz Papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Born
New York, New York, United States
Biography

Alex Katz's paintings and sculptures monumentalize common moments of everyday life. Katz was influenced by the golden age of the billboard business when hand-painted advertisements became an art form as well as a distraction on America's highways. He paints in a simple, direct style using large areas of unmodulated colors to attract our attention. Roadside signs with moving parts, in which the figures extended beyond the billboard, also motivated Katz to produce canvas cutouts pasted onto wooden boards, fashioning life-size figures that are like huge paper dolls. (Marshall, Alex Katz, 1986)

Works by this artist (4 items)

John Wilde, Wildeview, 1985, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, 1996.62, © 1985, John Wilde
Wildeview
Date1985
lithograph on paper
Not on view
John Wilde, 75 in 150 from the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Portfolio, 2001, aquatint and dry-point with select hand-coloring on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Janet Ann Bond Sutter and Thomas Henry Sutter, 2008.10.1.14, © 2001, Andrew G. Balkin and Renee E.K. Balkin
75 in 150 from the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Portfolio
Date2001
aquatint and dry-point with select hand-coloring on paper
Not on view
John Wilde, Hats #2, 1988, silverpoint on prepared paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Elizabeth Stevens and Mrs. E. N. Vanderpoel, 1996.45
Hats #2
Date1988
silverpoint on prepared paper
Not on view

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      An interview with the artist Alex Katz. Alex Katz's paintings and sculptures monumentalize common moments of everyday life. Katz was influenced by the golden age of the billboard business. Roadside signs with moving parts, in which the figures extended beyond the billboard, also motivated Katz to produce canvas cutouts pasted onto wooden boards, fashioning life-size figures that are like huge paper dolls. (Marshall, Alex Katz, 1986)

      Related Books

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      Crosscurrents: Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection
      In eighty-eight striking paintings and sculptures, Crosscurrents captures modernism as it moved from early abstractions by O’Keeffe, to Picasso and Pollock in midcentury, to pop riffs on contemporary culture by Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, and Tom Wesselmann—all illustrating the complexity and energy of a distinctly American modernism.