Ten Decades
of Alex Katz
Alex Katz has spent nearly a century painting – beginning amid Abstract Expressionism and later developing the bold, flat style that anticipated Pop Art. Since 1951, his work has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and 500 group shows. This timeline charts some of the milestones, transformations and the immense impact of his remarkable journey as an artist.
BorninBrooklyn,NewYork
Alex Katz is born to Russian Jewish parents who move to the residential neighbourhood of St. Albans, Queens, at the outset of the Great Depression in 1928. His mother, fluent in six languages, encourages him to recite poetry from a young age. He covers the family stairwell with crayon drawings and, in second grade, wins a citywide drawing competition.
StudiesattheCooperUnion,NewYork
In the aftermath of WWII, Katz attends The Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan, where he discovers his talent for painting. In 1949, he receives a scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine. His tutors encourage him to paint from life, giving him, as he puts it, “a reason to devote my life to painting”.
Makeshisfirstpaintedcutout&doubleportrait,Ada Ada
In 1957, Katz meets biologist Ada Del Moro and marries her just three months later. In 1959, he creates his first cutout and double portrait, Ada Ada, the first of more than 250 portraits of his wife and muse over his career. Its bold, graphic style anticipates Pop Art, establishing Katz as a key precursor to the movement.
Completeshisvery firstsilkscreen,Luna Park 1
Although Katz experiments with drypoint, linoleum and woodblock printing before this, Luna Park 1 marks the beginning of his mature printmaking practice – with its flat colouring and hard-edged composition going on to characterise his printmaking career for decades to come.
TakesoverNew York’sTimes Square
Katz transforms Times Square with a 247-foot-long, 20-foot-high billboard consisting of a frieze composed of 23 portrait heads of women, based on studies of nine distinct sitters painted from life. Three months of preliminary work go into the project, and the physical painting is created by sign painters, primarily painter Jerry Johnson, who, under Katz’s supervision, paints wet paint into wet paint, just as Katz does in his studio.
SurveyattheWhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt
Katz presents a focused survey at one of the world’s most prestigious museums. During the process, he realises he wants to push his work in new directions, retrospectively stating: “I wanted to move to a place in art that was unstable and terrifying”. This renewed sense of urgency inspires him to begin his seminal series of night paintings.
CreatestheAlex&AdaprintSeries
Katz creates an eight-print suite of silkscreens – Alex and Ada, the 1960s to the 1980s – a vivid, two-decade portrait of his marriage to Ada, his wife and most enduring muse. The editions distil his billboard-flat colour and cinematic crops into print, with works like White Hat and Ada with Sunglasses now among his most recognisable images.
EstablishestheAlexKatzFoundation
Katz sets up this initiative to champion artistic excellence, support artists and enhance access to contemporary art. The foundation pioneers a unique philanthropic model, purchasing works from mid-career and emerging artists and donating them directly to institutions. To date, the Alex Katz Foundation has donated more than 700 works and millions of dollars to various arts organisations.
Adecadeofimmersive,monumentallandscapes
By 2010, Katz is actively painting tightly cropped, monumental landscapes that explore light and the atmospherics of nature – Reflection with Lilies 2 is a notable example.
In 2015, the exhibition Alex Katz. This Is Now opens at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, surveying 25 years of his landscape work and featuring 35 pieces that employ a “grammar of abstraction” to convey what he calls “the present tense” – an explosive “flash” just before an image comes into focus.
During this period, he also experiments with iPhone photography, producing striking, abstracted compositions that signal a significant evolution in his visual approach and engagement with our changing digital world.
Katz’smajorretrospectiveopensattheGuggenheim
In October 2022, Alex Katz’s major retrospective at the Guggenheim opens, featuring 75 large canvases and 79 smaller works. Curated by Katherine Brinson, Alex Katz: Gathering cements the artist’s enduring influence across nearly a century of painting.
Credits
All artwork images ©2025 Alex Katz, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, unless otherwise noted. Archive images of Alex Katz are sourced from Alex Katz (Electra Rizzoli NY, 2020), © 2020 Alex Katz.
The 1946-1949 section includes subway drawings courtesy of Alex Katz, VAGA, New York, NY / DACS, London, courtesy of Timothy Taylor, sourced from Vogue. Archive image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Alex Katz, © Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. The painting Art School by Alex Katz is © Alex Katz, VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, gift of the artist. Additional archive images are credited to Fred W. McDarrah, Ada and Alex Katz, April 6, 1961, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. The 1977 section features a video excerpt from Alex Katz: What About Style?, credit Heinz Peter Schwerfel, with archive images credited to Chuck DeLaney. The 1986 section includes an article by Emily Tobias, Vassar Newspaper & Magazine Archive, Miscellany News, Volume LXXVI, Number 8, April 4, 1986.
Final film credit to The Guggenheim, New York. The video was created on the occasion of Alex Katz: Gathering, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, October 21, 2022–February 20, 2023. Installation images © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, photographed by Ariel Ione Williams and Midge Wattles.
Archive portraits are courtesy of the artist’s studio: Alex Katz in New York City, 1956; Portrait of Alex Katz, 2011, photographed by Vivien Bittencourt; and Alex in Maine 1, 2021, photographed by Isaac Katz.
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