Alex Katz

Pink Sweater

1981

Not on display

Artist: Alex Katz born 1927
Medium: Oil paint on hardboard
Dimensions: Support: 405 × 302 × 3 mm
frame: 428 × 322 × 30 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: AR00017

Online caption

Relaxed and casually dressed, Katz’s sitter has been captured in a private moment of reverie, suggesting a shared intimacy with the artist. The close-view and cropped frame lend it the quality of a photographic snapshot. Katz has been painting portraits of his family and friends in New York since the 1950s; these are now seen as precursors of Pop Art. Often grand in scale, they have a slick finish and detached manner with undercurrents of melancholia. 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."