Alex Katz (알렉스카츠) began painting portraits of Ada Del Moro when they met in 1957. Ada Del Moro soon became Ada Katz, his wife and timeless muse. In the course of their 60-year marriage, Katz has painted more than 250 portraits of Ada in simple, idealized styles as here in Ada in Spain. Sometimes Ada can be seen in large format in a close-up, other times she appears multiplied on the same painting or on sculptural, painted sections. With his characteristically smooth brushwork and almost minimalist depictions of bodies and faces, Katz captures the glow of external appearances with his brush, avoiding the emotion-based expressionist work of his colleagues. Seen alongside Ada, his oil paintings capture some elements of her face, but they often bear little resemblance to her. When asked whether these portraits of Ada actually look like her, Katz replied: “Nothing does. The oil painting to Ada in Spain which looks completely identical to the original print was sold at Sotheby’s in New York on May 16, 2018 for US$287,500 in the Post-War & Contemporary Auction.

Alex Katz (알렉스카츠) is especially famous for his figurative paintings: The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in New York in 1927. As a pioneer of Pop Art, he always concentrated on the essentials and early on he began to work with simplified forms and contrasting colour compositions. His art is diverse, but always has beauty as its central theme. The artist can now look back on more than 200 solo and around 500 group exhibitions; his diverse works are part of over 100 collections worldwide. Alex Katz lives and works in New York and Maine.