Alex Katz

American, 1927 -

Alex Katz is renowned for his large-scale portraits, landscapes, and flowers. His restrained compositions bear the trademark of flattened forms, simplification of detail, and direct paint application. Debuting a style that opposed abstraction of the 1950s, he insisted on representational subject matter and worked alongside artists such as Lois Dodd, Larry Rivers, as well as poets and writers Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, and Edwin Denby. For nearly seven decades, Katz moved across genres and devoted a particular focus to portraiture. Five Women (1977) is characteristic of the artist’s depiction of groups and gatherings that he began in the mid-1960s, and, as in many of his works, includes a portrait of his wife Ada, who remains his enduring subject and inspiration.