Alex Katz Sasha

Flat color and minimal forms contrast the often monumental scales of the paintings by Alex Katz through which he creates portraits and landscapes of deceptive simplicity. Although the signature stark style that defines his prints and other work is now recognizable at a glance, it took him a decade to develop. During that time, he has said he destroyed hundreds of paintings.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian émigré parents, Katz’s family moved to Queens when he was a baby and that is where his family’s passion for the arts supported his early creative interests. In 1946, he enrolled at the Cooper Union in Manhattan where he studied painting under Morris Kantor. While he was influenced by the bold colors and hard edges of modernism, he shifted away from the then-dominant Abstract Expressionism movement to figurative scenes of life that have an inherent cool in their pared-down approach. Especially impactful were Katz’s summer studies between 1949 and 1950 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, a place where, as he later wrote: “I tried plein air painting and found my subject matter and a reason to devote my life to painting.”

Katz’s first solo show was in 1954 at Roko Gallery in New York. He experimented over the course of the following years with collage and painting on aluminum sheets, with his work in the 1960s drawing inspiration from film and advertising. In the 1970s, Katz expanded into portrait groups that regularly depicted the cultural scene of New York; in the 1980s, he extended his focus to fashion and its supermodels. Since the late 1950s, an enduring muse for his portraits has been his wife, Ada, while others have painted friends and famous figures. The intimate closeness of the frequently cropped faces in Katz’s portraits exudes a sense of tension with the subjects’ enigmatic expressions and planes of color.

In the 1960s, Katz collaborated with American dancer and choreographer Paul Taylor on sets and costumes. His concentration on landscapes emerged in the late 1980s, with atmospheric night views joining his practice, which had previously been defined by bright colors. Always finding new perspectives on his work, he has explored using iPhone photographs as the basis for large-scale compositions in recent years.

Katz’s prolific career has spanned sculpture, prints and public art along with his paintings and drawings, and his works can be found in the collections of leading museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art. He has had over 250 solo exhibitions around the world and continues to be acclaimed. In 2022, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened a major retrospective of his art.

Find Alex Katz art today on 1stDibs.

Perhaps one of the most influential contemporary art movements, Pop art emerged in the 1950s. In stark contrast to traditional artistic practice, its practitioners drew on imagery from popular culture — comic books, advertising, product packaging and other commercial media — to create original Pop art paintings, prints and sculptures that celebrated ordinary life in the most literal way.

ORIGINS OF POP ART

• Started in Britain in the 1950s, flourished in 1960s-era America
• “This is Tomorrow,” at London's Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, was reportedly the first Pop art exhibition
• A reaction to postwar mass consumerism
• Transitioning away from Abstract Expressionism
• Informed by neo-Dada and artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg; influenced postmodernism and Photorealism 

CHARACTERISTICS OF POP ART 

• Bold imagery
• Bright, vivid colors
• Straightforward concepts
• Engagement with popular culture 
• Incorporation of everyday objects from advertisements, cartoons, comic books and other popular mass media

POP ARTISTS TO KNOW

• Richard Hamilton
• Andy Warhol
• Marta Minujín
• Claes Oldenburg
• Eduardo Paolozzi
• Rosalyn Drexler
• James Rosenquist
• Peter Blake
• Roy Lichtenstein

ORIGINAL POP ART ON 1STDIBS

The Pop art movement started in the United Kingdom as a reaction, both positive and critical, to the period’s consumerism. Its goal was to put popular culture on the same level as so-called high culture.

Richard Hamilton’s 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? is widely believed to have kickstarted this unconventional new style.

Pop art works are distinguished by their bold imagery, bright colors and seemingly commonplace subject matter. Practitioners sought to challenge the status quo, breaking with the perceived elitism of the previously dominant Abstract Expressionism and making statements about current events. Other key characteristics of Pop art include appropriation of imagery and techniques from popular and commercial culture; use of different media and formats; repetition in imagery and iconography; incorporation of mundane objects from advertisements, cartoons and other popular media; hard edges; and ironic and witty treatment of subject matter.

Although British artists launched the movement, they were soon overshadowed by their American counterparts. Pop art is perhaps most closely identified with American Pop artist Andy Warhol, whose clever appropriation of motifs and images helped to transform the artistic style into a lifestyle. Most of the best-known American artists associated with Pop art started in commercial art (Warhol made whimsical drawings as a hobby during his early years as a commercial illustrator), a background that helped them in merging high and popular culture.

Roy Lichtenstein was another prominent Pop artist that was active in the United States. Much like Warhol, Lichtenstein drew his subjects from print media, particularly comic strips, producing paintings and sculptures characterized by primary colors, bold outlines and halftone dots, elements appropriated from commercial printing. Recontextualizing a lowbrow image by importing it into a fine-art context was a trademark of his style. Neo-Pop artists like Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami further blurred the line between art and popular culture.

Pop art rose to prominence largely through the work of a handful of men creating works that were unemotional and distanced — in other words, stereotypically masculine. However, there were many important female Pop artists, such as Rosalyn Drexler, whose significant contributions to the movement are recognized today. Best known for her work as a playwright and novelist, Drexler also created paintings and collages embodying Pop art themes and stylistic features.

Read more about the history of Pop art and the style’s famous artists, and browse the collection of original Pop art paintings, prints, photography and other works for sale on 1stDibs.

Bring energy and an array of welcome colors and textures into your space by decorating with figurative fine-art prints and works on paper.

Figurative art stands in contrast to abstract art, which is more expressive than representational. The oldest-known work of figurative art is a figurative painting — specifically, a rock painting of an animal made over 40,000 years ago in Borneo. This remnant of a remote past has long faded, but its depiction of a cattle-like creature in elegant ocher markings endures.

Since then, figurative art has evolved significantly as it continues to represent the world, including a breadth of works on paper, including printmaking. This includes woodcuts, which are a type of relief print with perennial popularity among collectors. The artist carves into a block and applies ink to the raised surface, which is then pressed onto paper. There are also planographic prints, which use metal plates, stones or other flat surfaces as their base. The artist will often draw on the surface with grease crayon and then apply ink to those markings. Lithographs are a common version of planographic prints.

Figurative art printmaking was especially popular during the height of the Pop art movement, and this kind of work can be seen in artist Andy Warhol’s extensive use of photographic silkscreen printing. Everyday objects, logos and scenes were given a unique twist, whether in the style of a comic strip or in the use of neon colors.

Explore an impressive collection of figurative art prints for sale on 1stDibs and read about how to arrange your wall art.