- Artist
- Alex Katz born 1927
- Medium
- Oil paint on board
- Dimensions
- Support: 231 × 320 × 6 mm
frame: 250 × 321 × 34 mm - Collection
- ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
- Acquisition
- ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
- Reference
- AR00006
Online caption
Katz punctuates a green colour field with accents of colour, the simple, loose brushwork reminiscent of the abstract expressionist style. He has been painting flowers since the 1960s, often during summer residencies in Maine. The cropped, flattened composition and loose brushwork display a debt to Japanese art. Katz is well-known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and unmodulated colours are now seen as precursors of Pop Art. Small oil paintings such as this one are sketched from life and often intended to be scaled up into larger works, but their economic execution and visible brushstrokes reveal an intimate side to his practice. He says, "A sketch is very direct. It is working empirically, inside of an idea."