Alex Katz

Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1927. He has worked as a painter, sculptor, printmaker and collagist, remaining committed to figurative art through decades in which abstraction dominated postwar American painting. His large canvases are characterised by pared-down composition and heightened colour, qualities often described as anticipating Pop art, and he has worked repeatedly in portraiture as well as in prints, cut-out sculpture and collage. The Whitney Museum of American Art first acquired his work in 1961 and presented Alex Katz: Katherine and Elizabeth in 2014-15; the Metropolitan Museum of Art also holds his paintings.