Alex Katz. Portraits and Landscapes

Alex Katz has donated two paintings to Museum Brandhorst. An early work from 1958, showing the painter and sculptor George Ortman, and a recent, very personal double portrait of his wife Ada and his son Vincent. To mark this generous donation, Museum Brandhorst is presenting the exhibition Alex Katz: Portraits and Landscapes, which, in addition to the two new acquisitions, also presents the rich inventory of work by the artist held by the Brandhorst Collection. Following the major monographic exhibition Alex Katz in 2018/19, the current show once again brings together major works from all his creative phases.

Even at the age of 96, Alex Katz is still an enormously productive artist, as the more recent of his two donations, Ada and Vincent, proves. There are 65 years between Ada and Vincent from 2023 and George Ortman from 1958. The donations bridge the gap between his early and late work and enable an examination of aesthetic and thematic leitmotifs over the course of his 70-year career. Both works provide insights into Katz’s very personal family environment and are also contemporary documents of the social and artistic milieu in downtown New York in the 1950s.

More information: Museum Brandhorst