Monica De Cardenas is delighted to announce a very special exhibition of works on paper by renowned American artist Alex Katz, focusing on his drawings and cartoons. The show offers a close glimpse into his practice and mastery of portraiture through his bold, simplified traits that distill human figures to their essence.
Katz is one of the few contemporary painters still employing an essentially Renaissance procedure. He first creates pencil drawings of the whole composition or its individual elements, then makes oil sketches to fix color and tone values. Next, he enlarges and finalizes the conception onto a cartoon drawing (the term 'cartoon' derives from the Italian 'cartone' - cardboard - referring to the stiff paper often used for the purpose) then pricks the paper with a serrated wheel along the main lines. He pounds powder pigment through onto the canvas and finally executes the picture in oil. Such methods are very close to those used by Raphael and Leonardo to outline their frescos.
The works in the exhibition span from faces’ close-ups to upper body depictions, each showcasing Katz’s delicate balance between abstraction and realism. The cartoons give the figures an emotional depth through subtle nuances of expression and personality, while the drawings prove a lifelong dedication to capturing subjects with clarity and elegance.
This exhibition is a representation of Katz’s ability in transforming the seemingly ordinary into something monumental. Despite the simplicity of their forms, his portraits maintain a striking intimacy, drawing viewers into a deeper engagement. Each portrait feels immediate, alive and impactful, resonating with audiences across generations.
Katz combines traditional techniques with modern and postmodern influences: this is what sets him apart in the art world. His works are informed by a philosophical approach that balances spontaneity with discipline, surface with depth, and precision with approximation. In the end, Katz’s works reflect human presence, identity, and interaction with the world, all of which are deeply rooted in his commitment to drawing as the foundation of his art.
Alex Katz was born in New York in 1927 as the son of Russian – Jewish immigrants and studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art from 1946 to 1949. Since the 1960s he has developed a highly innovative realist style unlike any of his contemporaries. Having appeared on the American artistic scene at the end of the ʻ50s, the years of Abstract Expressionism, and being a contemporary of Pop Art and the subsequent artistic movements, Katz surprisingly managed to reconcile the abstract movement with realism in US post war art, in a style that he himself defines as “totally American”.
The work of Alex Katz is widely represented at museum in the USA, including MoMA, the Metropolitan and the Whitney in New York, as well as in European Museums, like Tate Modern in London, the MMK in Frankfurt, the Albertina in Vienna and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Recent solo exhibitions include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2015), Serpentine London (2016), Musée de l’Orangerie Paris (2019), Museum Thyssen in Madrid (2022), Guggenheim New York (2022) and MoMA in New York (2024).