Alex Katz – Pioneer of Pop Art

Legend has it that a mishap led to the first “cutout” by artist Alex Katz in 1959. Dissatisfied with the background in one of his paintings, he simply cut out the central figure – and mounted it on a plywood panel. Over the years, Alex Katz developed an independent form of two-dimensional “picture sculptures”. These are flat aluminum figures painted on both sides, standing freely in space.

In 2013, a complete exhibition in Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen with around 45 works from the period from 1959 onwards was dedicated to these cutouts.

Due to the missing background, they become part of their respective environment and transform with it and can be experienced as physical beings.

Alex Katz, certainly one of the most interesting artist figures from the time of Pop Art, has used his cutouts to stage portraits of individuals and groups, either as full-body or partial views, and in doing so, has transformed his animal portraits and landscapes into a different state, whereby they merge into the third dimension in space.

The enigmatic pictorial language of Alex Katz is still as topical as ever. This is reflected not least in the fact that it serves as an essential source of inspiration for representatives of recent American post-pop painting such as Richard Phillips or Elizabeth Peyton.

Alex Katz 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 explore simplified forms and contrasting color 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.