Alex Katz (b. 1927) is a Jewish-American painter based in New York, celebrated for his vividly colorful paintings, sculptures, and prints. He rose to prominence in the 1980s when he began creating large-scale paintings distinguished by their minimalist aesthetic, simplicity, and bold use of color. As a pioneer of the Pop Art movement, Katz paints both landscapes and portraits—capturing artists, dancers, models, and friends, as well as family members, including his wife Ada, to whom he has dedicated over 250 portraits throughout his career.
Now 93, Katz has developed a distinctive artistic language characterized by flat, restrained, and emotionally detached figures, rendered with minimal detail against solid, depthless backgrounds. His work often features the duplication of figures, a hallmark of Pop Art, and compositions reminiscent of 21st-century snapshot photography, with cropped subjects and dynamic framing.
Katz’s work has garnered widespread critical acclaim, with over 250 solo exhibitions and 650 group exhibitions worldwide since 1951. His pieces are featured in prestigious collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others. Represented by five of the world’s leading galleries, his works command prices in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.
Bottom line: Minimalist aesthetics, bold color.
