Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Literature:

Schröder, 87

Note:

Alex Katz’s great genius lies in his ability to simplify, removing the inessential while never losing either elegance or rigor. His work is spare and unfussy, but never boring. The critic John Russell, in his review of Katz’s 1986 retrospective at the Whitney Museum, wrote that “the paintings look easy, the way Fred Astaire made dancing look easy and Cole Porter made words and music sound easy, but don't let's be fooled. When it comes to the art that conceals art, Katz is right in there with those two great exemplars.”

Printmaking has complemented Katz’s painting practice for decades, and he views his works on paper as extensions of his works on canvas. Katz has spent much of his career thinking deeply about the elusive nature of what makes a great print, explaining that “printmaking is a matter of producing the same image over and over, and the image able to stand up to that treatment isn’t easy to come by.”

In “Olympic Swimmer,” it is the splash of water and the strong diagonal lines of blue which suggest motion. Some sources suggest that this might be a portrait of Ada, Katz’s wife and longtime muse, who has been present in the artist’s work since their meeting in October 1957. A profile of Ada in the New York Times remarks on her signature eyebrows, which set her apart from other subjects of Katz’s work. Ada recounts: “Elaine de Kooning said, ‘Oh, well, you paint Ada all the time because her face has an easy outline, and she never changes her hair or anything...Another time, she told me, ‘I’m looking at your face, and you and Harold Rosenberg”’ — the art critic — “‘are the only ones who have those thick eyebrows.’ I thought, Oh, my God, that was very funny.”
We invite you to read more about Alex Katz’s prints on our blog.