Page 28 - PROTAGONIST 121

Page 25, Alex Katz in his studio at his home in Lincolnville, Maine.
Photo: Allison V. Smith/For The Washington Post / Getty Images

His use of light and color has influenced entire generations of artists.

His portraits of enigmatic, elusive figures set in two-dimensional landscapes
form an artistic universe dominated by the instantaneousness of the “here

and now.” His vision of paintings is “Paint faster than you can think.”

“I like to make an image that is so simple you can’t avoid it, inated by the instantaneousness of the “here and now.” Katz has
and so complicated you can’t figure it out.” Alex Katz summarized his vision of painting in the formula “Paint faster
than you can think.”
Isn’t this what we think each time we stop to look at the sea?
You can’t avoid it, when it’s there in front of you and you observe Tall and wiry (he was on the basketball and track teams at
it, you think it’s easy to read; but actually – whether you are an on- high school and still works out every morning before breakfast),
looker or a mariner – it’s impossible to figure out its mystery. Katz seduced the world of art with a sophisticated mixture of
The sea, with the beloved Maine coastline, is one of Alex brilliant colors, flat backgrounds, and the mystery of gazes filled
Katz’s favorite subjects. with solitude.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, 93 years ago, he was a forerun- The sea is part of this universe.
ner of Pop Art, he distanced himself from abstract expression- As the art critic Calvin Tomkins recounted in a long, in-depth
ism, he designed sets and costumes for the dance company of profile published in The New Yorker in August 2018, Katz joined the
Paul Taylor, an icon of American modern ballet. He brought to Navy in 1945 and crossed the Atlantic in a converted luxury lin-
life a personal pathway that started in 1954 (the year of his first er; he landed in Marseilles, returned to North America, and from
solo show) and turned him into a crucial figure in the panorama there, by way of the Panama Canal, ventured into the Pacific all
of contemporary art, a figure hard to classify or place within an the way to Honolulu and Tokyo.
artistic trend.
In the beginning, there were dreams (going to Italy to study In 1949, Katz won a scholarship which allowed him to at-
Piero della Francesca, Tintoretto, and Giotto) and hardship. Katz tend summer courses at the Skowhegan School of Painting and
burned hundreds of his works in his fireplace: “I was poor, I lived Sculpture, in Maine. He experimented with “en plein air” paint-
in an unheated house, and that was the best use I could make of ing and, as he himself has declared, found a reason for dedi-
them,” he told journalist Alessandra Farka. Glory arrived in his cating his life to painting. Tomkins wrote, “He also discovered
maturity: over 200 solo shows, almost 500 collective exhibits, his Maine light, which struck him as richer and darker than the light
works are in the collections of the MoMA, the Metropolitan, the in Impressionist paintings.”
Tate Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, the Albertina, and the Gug- Still today, over seventy years later, every summer, Katz and
genheim. Last October, one of his works from 1972, Blue Umbrella his wife Ada (of Abruzzese origin and whom he has painted more
I, was sold at auction by Phillips in London for 3,375,000 pounds. than two hundred times over the decades) leave their SoHo loft
and transfer to a cottage in Lincolnville, on the Maine coast. Ac-
His use of light and color has influenced entire generations cording to the art critic Sanford Schwartz, this location has let him
of artists. His large-canvas portraits of enigmatic, elusive figures “come into contact with a freer version of himself.” Dark water,
set in two-dimensional landscapes form an artistic universe dom- seaside skies, a green, forest-covered coastline, and a light that

26 Art Protagonist