Smiles

At his first solo exhibition, at the Roko Gallery, New York, in 1954, Alex Katz presented small-format figurative works painted with loose brushstrokes. In part, these works were a product of his early interest in jazz and improvisation, but they also anticipated one of the crucial themes in his work: the portrait. Painted at a time when Abstract Expressionism was still preeminent, Katz’s early canvases prefigured a renewed interest in realism in representation, even before the emergence of Pop art. Often associated with Pop due to his use of elements drawn from film, advertising, and fashion, Katz nonetheless rejected this connection: “Pop Art deals with signs, while my work deals with symbols. Pop Art is cynical and ironic. My work is not. Those are big differences. Pop Art is modern. My work is traditional.”[1]

In the 1960s Katz began to create large-format paintings in his signature flat style, depicting figures set against abstracted landscapes or monochrome backgrounds. As the size of his canvases increased, so too did the complexity of his compositions: while his first paintings had depicted individuals alone or in pairs, he now began to create elaborate scenes with large groups of people, or the same subject portrayed several times. In the 1970s he continued to explore large-format painting, creating some of his largest works, and in the following decade he developed a new pictorial style that incorporated large expanses of landscape, while also continuing to paint portraits. In the past two decades Katz’s works have become increasingly abstract, featuring compositions in which the imagery is reduced to a small part of the total surface.