Lithograph, 2016

Edition : 68/100

Publisher : Lococo Fine Art (St. Louis)

Printer : Lococo Fine Art (St. Louis)

Image dimensions : 86.00 cm. x 86.00 cm. (33.86 in. x 33.86 in.)

Paper dimensions : 86.00 cm. x 86.00 cm. (33.86 in. x 33.86 in.)

Handsigned by the artist in pencil
Certificate of authenticity
Excellent condition

Crane Museo Max paper

In this work, Alex Katz deploys with remarkable effectiveness his immediately recognisable visual language: a frontal, pared-down, luminous figuration, in which the presence of the model emerges less from detail than from the power of framing and colour. The composition is based on a play of doubling the female face, shown both in extreme close-up and in a closer bust view, like two fragments of the same apparition. This device gives the image an almost cinematic quality, close to montage or a cropped shot, while preserving the silent frontality so characteristic of the artist.
The face, treated in broad, clear planes, stands out in a soft, even light. The features are reduced to the essentials: the arch of the eyebrows, the line of the eyes, the outline of the nose, and the slightly parted red mouth. This formal economy, far from cooling the image, instead gives it a singular intensity. Katz does not seek to psychologise his subject; he captures a presence, an attitude, a suspended moment between the intimacy of portraiture and the contemporary icon.
The palette combines delicate, almost powdered flesh tones with more vivid accents: the pink of the lips, the golden blond of the hair, and the bright pink of the garment or motif that animates the lower part of the composition. This contrast between chromatic softness and graphic energy gives the whole a great visual freshness. The figure appears at once close and elusive, familiar and stylised, as though caught in the fleeting brilliance of a fashion image, a memory, or a screen.
Through this work, Alex Katz affirms one of the great strengths of his art: transforming an apparently simple image into a composition of great sophistication. The tight framing, the monumentality of the face and the precision of the lines create a subtle tension between portraiture, abstraction and design. The artist thus succeeds in bringing the tradition of portraiture into dialogue with the modern aesthetics of advertising, cinema and American visual culture.

Ref : LCD8298