Portraits like Laura are one of the great themes in the work of Alex Katz. With his signature approach and style, he transforms the circle of his family, friends, and New York socialites into unforgettable icons. His works are characterized by their flatness of color and form, their economy of line, and their cool yet seductive emotional distance.

Katz is the ultimate master of the flat style. His works may seem simple, but they are instead complex studies of color and shading. A student of color theory, he understands how to capture depth and dimension with contrasting and complementary hues like no other artist.

The work Laura is a portrait of Laura Halzack, prima ballerina with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York City. Alex Katz met Laura through Paul Taylor, with whom he has collaborated on more than a dozen stage and costume designs since 1960. Laura, like many of Katz’s portrait subjects, is presented without context. On the compressed picture plane, she stands against a background in a single dark hue that contrasts with the soft peach tone of her skin. No narrative is provided other than her first name. This lack of narrative reinforces the enigmatic qualities of the dancer and allows Laura to exist in and for herself.

Influenced by film, television, and billboard advertising, the composition of Laura 1 is like a cinematic close-up. The detail of the dancer’s profile is perfectly matched to the black background. The work is cropped in such a way that it appears Katz has captured a sincere, temporal moment, which he has indeed done given the ephemeral nature of dance. Katz’s distinction as an artist lies in his intriguingly pared-down, flat style. His mastery of color and minimalism is timeless. His portraits also have a special quality in that they always represent the society of which they are a part, and can be experienced in their entirety almost like a family photo album.

Alex Katz / Pioneer of Pop Art

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 dealt with 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.