The name Alex Katz conjures images of American coastal leisure and urban sophistication. Katz’s iconic portraits and painterly landscapes have been the subject of over 250 solo exhibitions worldwide, including the recent blockbuster Alex Katz: Gathering at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Yet, Katz was born a world away from the “preppy-bohemian glamor” depicted in his work, in the South Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay on July 24, 1927.

A young Katz in his studio. Photograph by Timothy Taylor.

Katz’s parents were Russian Jewish immigrants Sima and Isaac Katz, whose shared interest in theater, poetry, and European Expressionism had a profound impact on him as a child. His mother Sima studied acting in Odessa and had a brief career as a Yiddish theater actress on the Lower East Side, while his father Isaac, who lost his factory in the Russian Revolution, worked as a coffee wholesaler. At the beginning of the Great Depression, the Katz family moved to St. Albans, Queens, where they were one of just two Jewish families in the neighborhood. Katz was raised non-observant and never had a bar mitzvah.

In 1946, at the age of 19, Katz enrolled at Manhattan’s Cooper Union Art School, where he studied under the artist Morris Kantor. That same year Katz painted one of his earliest works to later enter a public collection, a portrait of his mother titled Ella Marion in a Red Sweater, now at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Alex Katz, *Ella Marion in a Red Sweater*, 1946.

Ella Marion was Sima Katz’s stage name during her theater years, yet the portrait captures her in a more humble setting. She leans over a brown table with a teacup and saucer, gazing warmly and intimately at the viewer. Her red sweater immediately pulls focus, while behind her, blocks of gray, blue and green form a shape loosely suggestive of a window. The portrait offers a glimpse into the relationship between Katz and his mother. Sima’s shy yet mischievous smile denotes an ease and affection with her son, as she allows her theatrical side to come through. Katz’s decision to title the work “Ella Marion” suggests his admiration for her as an actress and as his subject. One can imagine a lively and intellectual conversation unfolding between the two as she sits at the table for her portrait.

While stylistically quite different from the pop art-inflected works Katz is best known for, Ella Marion in a Red Sweater contains several elements that the artist builds on in later works. Katz would continue to paint the women in his life, as well as the many artists of various disciplines that would make up his social circle.

Katz met and married his wife Ada in 1957, and over the course of their marriage painted her over 250 times. Like Ella Marion in a Red Sweater, Katz’s most memorable portraits of Ada feature distinct clothing and accessories that serve as an emblem of her character.

Katz’s first-ever solo show was held in 1954 at Roko Gallery, a space devoted to young American artists established by the Polish-Jewish art dealer Michael Leon Freilich. As his career progressed throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Katz became part of a group of influential painters known as the New York School. His circle soon expanded to include poets, photographers, dancers, and critics, and it was this social world that he translated into painting from the mid-60s through the 1970s. His large-scale works from this period evidence an artistic preoccupation with the lives of other artists. Figures are studied from all angles and arranged in complex layered groups. Katz pays particularly close attention to the details of his subjects’ clothing and attire, using thicker brushwork to stylize popular patterns and materials of the time.

By the late 1980s, Katz shifted his focus to landscapes, creating what he calls “environmental” paintings from his summer studio in Lincolnville, Maine. These works tend to isolate and exaggerate a single quality in nature, like the reflectiveness of water or the lightness of falling leaves. In recent years, Katz has become increasingly prolific and experimental with his landscapes, painting large close-ups of trees and flowers in all four seasons and in both day and nighttime light. A selection of these works—all painted during Katz’s extended stay in Pennsylvania in 2020—are currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through September 8, 2024.

With a career spanning nine decades and a legacy of critical and commercial success, Alex Katz has been a defining figure and robust supporter of American contemporary art. Now 97 years old, his work is represented in major institutions across the US as well as internationally at museums such as Fondation Louis Vuitton (France), Reina Sofia (Spain), the Israel Museum (Israel) and the Tate Gallery (England), among others.

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