Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 14

Alex Katz
"Ada Four Times #2" Modern Figurative Silkscreen & Lithograph AP Edition 6/6

1979-1980

$7,500
£5,667.50
€6,544.58
CA$10,480.12
A$11,628.57
CHF 6,091.30
MX$142,597.53
NOK 77,479.20
SEK 73,137.06
DKK 48,807
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

Modern figurative silkscreen and lithograph by renowned artist Alex Katz. The work features a portrait of Ada, Katz's wife and muse, turned to face the left. The work is part of a series of four portrait of Ada facing different directions. The work is signed and editioned in pencil in the front lower left corner. Currently hung in a light wood floating frame. Dimensions Without Frame: H 30 in. x W 22.5 in. Artist Biography: Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. In 1928, at the outset of the Depression, his family moved to St. Albans, a diverse suburb of Queens that had sprung up between the two world wars. Katz was raised by his Russian émigré parents, both of whom were interested in poetry and the arts, his mother having been an actress in Yiddish Theater. Katz attended Woodrow Wilson High School for its unique program that allowed him to devote his mornings to academics and his afternoons to the arts. In 1946, Katz entered The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan. At Cooper Union, Katz studied painting under Morris Kantor and was trained in Modern art theories and techniques. Upon graduating in 1949, Katz was awarded a scholarship for summer study at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, a grant that he would renew the following summer. During his years at Cooper Union, Katz had been exposed primarily to modern art and was taught to paint from drawings. Skowhegan encouraged him to paint from life, which would prove pivotal in his development as a painter and remains a staple of his practices today. Katz explains that Skowhegan’s plein air painting gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.” Katz’s first one-person show was held at the Roko Gallery in 1954. Katz had begun to develop a circle of acquaintances within the second generation New York School painters and their allies in the other arts. He counted among his friends the figurative painters Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter, and Larry Rivers, photographer Rudolph Burckhardt, and poets John Ashbery, Edwin Denby, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. From 1955 to 1959, usually following a day of painting, Katz made small collages of figures in landscapes from hand-colored strips of delicately cut paper. In the late 1950s, he became increasingly interested in portraiture and painted his friends and in particular his wife and muse, Ada. Katz began using monochrome backgrounds, which would become a defining characteristic of his style, anticipating Pop Art and separating him from gestural figure painters and the New Perceptual Realism. In 1959, Katz made his first painted cutout. At first these were cut out from canvas and mounted on contoured wood; soon, he began painting them directly onto the cut wood. In the 1960s, he shifted to painting directly on shaped aluminum sheets, a practice which has continued throughout his career, forming a series of freestanding or wall-mounted portraits that exist in actual space. In the early 1960s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces. In 1965, he also embarked on a prolific career in printmaking. Katz would go on to produce many editions in lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodcut and linoleum cut. After 1964, Katz increasingly portrayed groups of figures. He would continue painting these complex groups into the 1970s, portraying the social world of painters, poets, critics, and other colleagues that surrounded him. He began designing sets and costumes for choreographer Paul Taylor in the early 1960s, and he has painted many images of dancers throughout the years. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Katz focused much of his attention on large landscape paintings, which he characterizes as “environmental.” Rather than observing a scene from afar, the viewer feels enveloped by nearby nature. Katz began each of these canvases with “an idea of the landscape, a conception,” trying to find the image in nature afterwards. In his landscape paintings, Katz loosened the edges of the forms, executing the works with greater painterliness than before in these allover canvases. In 1986, Katz began painting a series of night pictures—a departure from the sunlit landscapes he had previously painted, forcing him to explore a new type of light. Variations on the theme of light falling through branches appear in Katz’s work throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century. At the beginning of the new millennium, Katz also began painting flowers in profusion, covering canvases in blossoms similar to those he had first explored in the late 1960s, when he painted large close-ups of flowers in solitude or in small clusters. Beginning in 2010, Katz re-framed his subject matter, employing more drastic cropping of individual portraits. He also began composing multiple portraits using tightly cropped images of the same subject sequenced across the linen. Since 2015, Katz has frequently begun his process by taking photographs with his iPhone, which he then prints out, cuts, and collages into compositions. From these maquettes, he may make painted studies or go straight to making a large-scale cartoon, from which he paints an oil on linen. During an extended stay in Pennslyvania from spring through early summer of 2020, Katz made more than 50 paintings, mainly of flowers and landscapes he saw around him.
  • Creator:
    Alex Katz (1927, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1979-1980
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 35.5 in (90.17 cm)Width: 27.75 in (70.49 cm)Depth: 1.25 in (3.18 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Houston, TX
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: CA280.2024.1030.62321stDibs: LU551315397672

More From This Seller

View All
"Girl Germs" Contemporary Black and White Figurative Female Nude Linocut Ed. 2/8
By Karin Broker
Located in Houston, TX
Black and white figurative nude linocut by contemporary artist Karin Broker. The work features a central headless female nude figure surrounded by stereotypically "girl" icons such a...
Category

1990s Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Linocut

Black and White Figurative Print of a Woman 9/20
By Beth Secor
Located in Houston, TX
Black and white etching of a young woman named Jessie Magdalene Brewer. This piece features Beth Secor's iconic swirling and knotted brushwork that echo the dense weave of a tapestry...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Portrait Drawing of a Man
By Otis Huband
Located in Houston, TX
Charcoal drawing of a bust of a nude man by Otis Huband in 1972. Signed and dated by artist. Artist Biography: Otis Huband was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1933. He began st...
Category

1970s Modern Nude Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Charcoal

Early Modern Black & White Abstract Figurative Elegant Woman Drawing
Located in Houston, TX
Early modern black and white sketch by iconic Houston based artist David Adickes. Pulled from a collection of previously undiscovered sketchbooks, this work serves as a peak behind t...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pencil

"Omaggio a Michelangelo" Monochromatic Abstract Figurative Etching Ed 98/200
By Giacomo Manzú
Located in Houston, TX
Monochromatic abstract figurative etching by Italian artist Giacomo Manzú. The piece depicts an image of Jesus Christ with a distinct facial expression on wove paper. Signed and editioned 98/200 by the artist at the bottom. Glass framed in a natural wooden frame. This particular work is included in the 1975 Portfolio "Omaggio a Michelangelo" (Homage to Michelangelo) which comprises 13 prints (8 partly colored etchings and 5 color lithographs). The portfolio includes other original signed and editioned prints by artists Horst Antes, Jorge Castillo, Emilio Greco, Renato Guttuso, David Hockney, Jean Ipoustéguy, Fiacomo Manzù, Marino Marini, André Masson, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolzzi, Fritz Wotruba, and Paul Wunderlich. Dimensions Without Frame: H 31 in. x W 23.5 in. Artist Biography: Giacomo Manzù, original name Giacomo Manzoni, (born December 22, 1908, Bergamo, Italy—died January 17, 1991, Ardea), Italian sculptor who, in the mid-20th century, revived the ancient tradition of creating sculptural bronze doors for ecclesiastical buildings. His sober realism and extremely delicate modeling alternately achieved austere severity and sensuousness of form and surface, lending a new spirit of vitality to figurative bronze sculpture. Manzù had to leave school at an early age to learn a trade, and he was apprenticed to local craftsmen who taught him to carve wood and to work in metal and stone. After service in the Italian army from 1927 to 1928, Manzù went to Paris to try his luck as a sculptor, but after three weeks he collapsed from hunger and was deported back to Italy. He settled in Milan, and, after receiving a commission in 1929 to decorate a chapel at the Catholic University, he devoted himself to sculpting full-time. Manzù’s early works were nudes, portraits, and biblical subjects, executed in a style that at first was influenced by Etruscan, Egyptian, and medieval art. However, he soon adopted the Impressionist techniques of the Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso...
Category

20th Century Abstract Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Teal, Brown and White Toned Modernist Figurative Print of a Native Elder
Located in Houston, TX
Teal and brown abstract figurative original print by Chicano artist Amado Maurilio Peña Jr. This piece depicts a native elderly woman with long, white hair in ...
Category

1970s Modern Abstract Prints

Materials

Archival Pigment

You May Also Like

Ada Four Times 4
By Alex Katz
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Alex Katz (b. 1927) has been dedicated to art-making since the 1950's - however, it wasn't until the 60's when he established his signature 'flat' figurative style. Over the succeedi...
Category

1970s Minimalist Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph, Screen

Alex Katz 'Susan' (Maravell 90) Screenprint on Arches Paper 1976
By Alex Katz
Located in Miami, FL
ALEX KATZ (1927-Present) This Alex Katz 1976 screenprint 'Susan' is printed in colors, signed in pencil and numbered XIII/L from the deluxe edition, apart from the Arabic numeral ed...
Category

1970s Contemporary Prints and Multiples

Materials

Screen

Susan (1976), Screenprint by Alex Katz (Deluxe Limited Edition of 50)
By Alex Katz
Located in Hong Kong, HK
Susan (1976) A rare and historic lithograph by Alex Katz signed and numbered by the artist. screenprint in colors on Tronko Japan paper sheet/image: 26 h × 19⅝ w in (66 × 50 cm) fr...
Category

1970s Pop Art Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Screen

Alex Katz 'Sara' Screenprint 2012
By Alex Katz
Located in Miami, FL
ALEX KATZ (1927-Present) 32-color silkscreen on 2-ply museum board signed and numbered 23/60 in pencil. Published by Lococo Fine Art Publisher, St. Louis, Missouri.
Category

1970s Contemporary Prints and Multiples

Materials

Screen, Archival Paper

Ada 10 - From the Ada Portfolio
By Alex Katz
Located in Fort Lauderdale, FL
Alex Katz (b. 1927) Ada 10 — From the ADA Portfolio, 2022, (/100) Silkscreen in colors on Saunders Waterford High White HP 425 gsm paper sheet: 54 x 40.50 in (137.16 x 102.87 cm) Ed...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

Ada 1 - From the ADA Portfolio (/100)
By Alex Katz
Located in Fort Lauderdale, FL
Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. In 1928, at the outset of the Depression, his family moved to St. Albans, a diverse suburb of Queens that had sprung up between the two wars. Katz was raised in St. Albans by his Russian parents. His mother had been an actress and possessed a deep interest in poetry and his father, a businessman, also had an interest in the arts. Katz attended Woodrow Wilson High School for its unique program that allowed him to devote his mornings to academics and his afternoons to the arts. In 1946, Katz entered The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan, a prestigious college of art, architecture, and engineering. At The Cooper Union, Katz studied painting under Morris Kantor and was trained in Modern art theories and techniques. Upon graduating in 1949, Katz was awarded a scholarship for summer study at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, a grant that he would renew the following summer. During his years at Cooper Union, Katz had been exposed primarily to modern art and was taught to paint from drawings. Skowhegan exposed him to painting from life, which would prove pivotal in his development as a painter and remains a staple of his practices today. Katz explains that Skowhegan’s plein air painting gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.” Katz’s first one-person show was held at the Roko Gallery in 1954. Katz had begun to develop greater acquaintances with the New York School and their allies in the other arts; he counted amongst his friends’ figurative painters Larry Rivers and Fairfield Porter, photographer Rudolph Burckhardt, and poets John Ashbery, Edwin Denby, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. From 1955 to 1959, usually following a day of painting, Katz made small collages of figures in landscapes from hand-colored strips of delicately cut paper. In the late 1950s, he moved towards greater realism in his paintings. Katz became increasingly interested in portraiture, and painted his friends and his wife and muse, Ada. He embraced monochrome backgrounds, which would become a defining characteristic of his style, anticipating Pop Art and separating him from gestural figure painters and the New Perceptual Realism. In 1959, Katz made his first cutout, which would grow into a series of flat “sculptures;” freestanding or relief portraits that exist in actual space. In the early 1960s, influenced by films, television, and billboard advertising, Katz began painting large-scale paintings, often with dramatically cropped faces. In 1965, he also embarked on a prolific career in printmaking. Katz would go on to produce many editions in lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodcut and linoleum cut. After 1964, Katz increasingly portrayed groups of figures. He would continue painting these complex groups into the 1970s, portraying the social world of painters, poets, critics, and other colleagues that surrounded him. He began designing sets and costumes for choreographer Paul Taylor in the early 1960s, and he has painted many images of dancers throughout the years. In the 1980s, Katz took on a new subject in his work: fashion models in designer clothing. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Katz focused much of his attention on large landscape paintings, which he characterizes as “environmental.” Rather than observing a scene from afar, the viewer feels enveloped by nearby nature. Katz began each of these canvases with “an idea of the landscape, a conception,” trying to find the image in nature afterwards. In his landscape paintings, Katz loosened the edges of the forms, executing the works with greater painterliness than before in these allover canvases. In 1986, Katz began painting a series of night pictures—a sharp departure from the sunlit landscapes he had previously painted, forcing him to explore a new type of light. Variations on the theme of light falling through branches appear in Katz’s work throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century. At the beginning of the new millennium, Katz also began painting flowers in profusion, covering canvases in blossoms similar to those he had first explored in the late 1960s, when he painted large close-ups of flowers in solitude or in small clusters. More recently Katz began painting a series of dancers and one of nudes, which was the subject of a 2011 exhibition at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover. Katz’s work continues to grow and evolve today. Alex Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions internationally since 1951. In 2010, Alex Katz Prints was on view at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, which showed a retrospective survey of over 150 graphic works from a recent donation to the museum by Katz of his complete graphic oeuvre. The National Portrait Gallery in London presented an exhibition titled Alex Katz Portraits. In June 2010, The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine opened Alex Katz: New Work, exhibiting recent large-scale paintings inspired by his summers spent in Maine. Katz was also represented in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, curated by Marla Prather, entitled Facing the Figure: Selections from the Permanent Collection, 2010. In 2009-2010, Alex Katz: An American Way Of Seeing was on view at the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland; Musée Grenoble, Grenoble, France; and the Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany. In 2007, Alex Katz: New York opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland. The show, which included approximately 40 paintings and aquatints, was the first exhibition to concentrate primarily on Katz’s relationship with his native city. The Jewish Museum, New York, presented Alex Katz Paints Ada in 2006-2007, an exhibition of 40 paintings focused on Katz’s wife, Ada, dating from 1957 to 2005. It coincided with an exhibition devoted to Katz’s paintings of the 1960s at PaceWildenstein, Alex Katz: The Sixties, on view from April 27 through June 17, 2006 at 545 West 22nd Street. Alex Katz in Maine, an exhibition of landscapes and portraits made over six decades, opened at The Farnsworth Art Museum and Wyeth...
Category

2010s Contemporary Prints and Multiples

Materials

Screen