(born in Brooklyn/New York in 1927)
Maria, 1990 signed and dated, oil on board, 45.7 x 60.7 cm, framed

This work is registered in the Alex Katz archive.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy
European Private Collection
Acquired from the above by the present owner

In the nineteen-fifties, when most of the serious art being done was abstract, Katz outraged scores of artists and formalist critics by inventing new ways to paint the human figure. He 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. (…)

His main influences were television ads, movie closeups, Japanese prints (by Utamaro, in particular), and billboards (…).

Katz had found a way to paint portraits that he described, as “brand-new & terrific.” Ignoring character and mood, he offered the pure sensation of outward appearance—not who the people were, but how they appeared at a specific moment. “I can’t think of anything more exciting than the surface of things,” he later told an interviewer.
(taken from: Calvin Tompkins, Alex Katz’s Life in Art, The New Yorker, 20/8/2018)