: Best known for his large-scale, eye-catching, color-filled
portraits, figures and landscapes, Alex Katz has played a major
role in the emergence of a new realism in American art. A pioneer
in adapting the size and spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism to
figurative painting, Katz, born in 1927, has attracted an
enormous following among critics and the general public.
Innately a maverick who never wanted to be part of any art
movement, Katz's idiosyncratic compositions - radically cropped,
flattened and stylized - are icons of Twentieth Century art. His
style, he says, is "very cool" and "highly stylized."
Observes Farnsworth Art Museum director emeritus Christopher
Crossman, "Like [Andrew] Wyeth, Katz's work has run against the
mainstream of contemporary art...Katz has steadfastly painted, in
his distinctive, highly personal, representational style, the
people and places he knows best."
