White Hat And Sunglasses is a print by the American artist Alex Katz. The artwork shows his wife Ada whom he has portrayed frequently.  As in many of his portraits, the woman wears a hat, more precisely a sun hat. Thus, the viewer automatically associates the artwork with summer and sunshine, although there are no hints of a landscape or season in the background. This work is special in that it is the only work by Alex Katz that has been produced using the so-called cyanotype printing technique.

This process was originally developed in 1842 to produce the first stable photographic images. The characteristic blue coloration of the outlines created during the production process gave rise to the term “blueprint” at the time, because it was the only reproduction process for a long time, long before the advent of photocopiers. The blue fine outlines in Alex Katz Ada White Hat And Sunglasses give the artwork an almost unique character, you could even say it looks like an ink drawing.

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 today in New York and Maine. There are currently more original graphics with the motifs “Straw Hat”, “Sunrise”, “Halsey” and “Grace” in preparation. The Guggenheim Museum in New York shows the retrospect “Gathering” in October 2022.