Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York,  1927.

 

Katz achieved great public prominence in the 1980s. He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened prints, and sculptures. A figurative artist known for his paintings, colours are now seen as precursors to Pop Art.

Katz's paintings are divided almost equally into the genres of portraiture and landscape. Ada Katz, whom he married in 1958, has been the subject of over 250 portraits throughout his career.

Since 1951, Alex Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. Katz' first one-person show was an exhibition of paintings at the Roko Gallery in New York in 1954. In 1974 the Whitney Museum of American Art showed Alex Katz Prints, followed by a traveling retrospective exhibition of paintings and cutouts titled Alex Katz in 1986.

 

Katz's work is in the collections of over 100 public institutions worldwide.