From the smile of his wife to the avant-garde who drank and smoked: the huge portraits of Alex Katz take over the Thyssen

In the 1950s, at a time when informalism and material painting that encapsulated the trauma of World War II were giving way to an abstract expressionism that was as furious as it was studiously anarchic, a young Alex Katz (New York, 94 years old) ) preferred to “follow their instincts” and swim against the tide.

His nose told him to paint people.

Scenery.

As it had always been done, but with a new look.

A scholarship that he received for a prestigious summer school where the teachers ended up "copying his colors", as he himself recalls at 94 years old, confirmed that the hunch was good.

A short time later, “in his early twenties”, Katz was already well known in New York artistic and poetic circles.

"That's when I realized that I would never have to worry about anything again," he jokes.

The truth is that he was soon crowned as one of the referents of the return to large-scale figurative painting in the second half of the 20th century.

He is also considered a pioneer of pop art for his luminous colors and synthetic lines, as well as a master of portraiture understood as a genre beyond the psychological.

Seven decades after those beginnings, Katz has not relaxed.

On the contrary: he works “more than ever”.

He looks full, in top form, although he confesses that, like anyone else, he has emerged "more isolated" from the pandemic.

With a whole life behind him, he is still making his debut in something:

at the Thyssen-Bornemisza (until September 11), a selection of four dozen works that cover the main stages that have marked his career.

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) The painter Alex Katz and his son, Vincent Katz, at the Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

DVD 1110 (06-10-22) Alex Katzs exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Samuel SanchezSamuel Sanchez

As soon as the press conference begins, Guillermo Solana, the artistic director of the museum and curator of the exhibition together with the late Tomás Llorens, warns that Katz, sitting next to him and listening to the interpreter in his headphones, is sparing in words.

A few days before, EL PAÍS had been able to verify it: to some questions sent by email, the artist responded with just a few words.

Dressed in a white suit, black shirt, maroon tie and sunglasses over his shaved skull, Katz keeps that legend alive for a few moments before the journalists who have attended the presentation, where Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza are also present. as well as the painter's son and daughter-in-law.

“The selection of works is quite good: I want to thank my family, because they have done almost all the work,

With questions from Solana, who explained how the exhibition was originally scheduled for June 2020, and has had to overcome the obstacles of the pandemic, the increase in transport prices and the proximity of dates with an upcoming retrospective of the artist in the Guggenheim in New York (where a dozen works will be sent directly from the Thyssen), Katz began to loosen up little by little.

In the end, also questioned by the reporters, he spoke, if not at length, at least beyond monosyllables on a few topics: from the details of his working days to his vision of the war in Ukraine.

"Because of the technique, when I was 20 years old I destroyed a thousand paintings, but now I am technically excellent," the artist boasts

From his day to day, Katz said that he gets up "always at 7:30, seven days a week."

“Sometimes I work 20 minutes and other times the whole day.

I am spotty.

And the work that I do is part intellectual and part manual,” he explained.

"Because of technique, when I was 20 years old I destroyed a thousand paintings, but now I am technically excellent, and it doesn't take me long."

Grateful that in his seventy-year career his production has not had to be interrupted by “wars or famines”, the painter thinks that Russia will end up backing down in the current conflict with Ukraine.

"War victories depend on technique, and Russia seems to be behind the times in these matters," he pointed out, to add: "Although Russian elevators are excellent: you get on and you don't feel a thing."

And more laughter from those present.

If on other occasions the Thyssen has organized its temporary exhibitions to broaden the vision of some of the artists included in its collection (such as those dedicated to Balthus or Georgia O'Keeffe), in this case the origin of the project goes back to the "verification of an absence.

Until now, the Thyssen did not have any work by Katz, but Borja and Blanca Thyssen have just acquired a painting for their personal collection,

, from 2016, which can be seen in the exhibition and will later remain in storage at the museum.

The protagonist of the painting, a multiple portrait in which her face appears five times, is Katz's daughter-in-law (his son Vincent's wife), who has recently replaced the artist's wife, Ada del Moro, as the muse of his famous and almost always smiling close-ups captured on canvases of extraordinary dimensions.

“I have painted Ada more than a thousand times.

Love is the great inspiration of everything”, he replied to EL PAÍS by email.

The individual portraits mark the first stop on the journey through Katz's career, which adopted from the abstract expressionists the tendency to the XXL format.

“I started painting from the unconscious”, he expanded on his beginnings.

"As Pollock expanded, I wanted to find my style."

Along with his solitary figures, drawn with flat, homogeneous colors, Katz also began to produce group portraits in which he reflected the social life of the New York avant-garde.

His intention was to capture the gesture that defined that time, the sixties, and he found it in the act of "drinking and smoking."

“Today people no longer drink or smoke.

They are more isolated, and so am I."

His landscapes, which invite the viewer to get into them and get lost, have something abstract in the construction of forms with the minimum trace.

And its

, effigies cut out and spread out on a board like tokens from the Who's Who game, refer to sculpture without leaving the two dimensions of painting.

At a stage in his career in which he continues to be active on the gallery circuit and at the same time the great museums raffle him off to organize retrospectives, Katz admits that his flashes of inspiration come not so much from hard work but from the moments in which he simply does nothing".

“You have an idea of ​​what art should be, and suddenly you see things that connect with that idea: the light that crosses a table, a gesture, a person.

It's something unexpected."

Is there any work capable of condensing all the changes and turns of his trajectory?, we ask him.

"There isn't one," he replies.

"But my favorites right now are a recent series I've done of water paintings."

And, after all this time, have you come to a conclusion about what painting is for?

The sly Alex Katz returns,

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