Alex Katz

(New York, 1927)

Vertical Evening

1982

oil on canvas

273.5 x 91.5 cm

Inv. no. 2559

BBVA Collection Spain



An outstanding figurative painter, Alex Katz is known for his personal vision of the upper echelons of American society. Hard to pigeonhole, his work—focused on the human being and on landscape—responds to his need to represent his community and environment from a highly personal viewpoint. Regarded as one of the forerunners of
, his practice diverged from the abstract initiatives defining US twentieth-century art, instead advocating an inward-looking and renewed approach to figuration. In that sense, his style may be better ascribed to so-called American
.

Since the 1960s Katz has divided his painting between landscape and portraiture, with an obvious economy of lines and eschewing any trace of emotion. Undoubtedly influenced by cinema, television and advertising, he gradually increased the size of his works, instilling in them great precision, extreme sleekness and an acute pictorial sense.

His suites of portraits account for the bulk of his output and are the main distinctive feature of his work. In them, he affords a silent, introspective view of the sitters, inviting the beholder to enter into their everyday lives and to try to guess their thoughts. His characters are often depicted in open-air scenes, sometimes in either suburban or rural environments, although in other occasions, as in the case of the work in hand, he portrays them in interiors.

Vertical Evening depicts a woman probably sitting in front of a piano, engrossed in her thoughts and with a serene and pensive look. Given the similarity of this female figure with the artist’s wife, Ada, who often poses for his works, it may well be a portrait of her. Worth mentioning in this piece is the use of flat colours, uniformly applied and conveying a dim light, similar to a halo that reminds us of an out-of-focus photo print. The beholder’s first impression on looking at this work is a certain coldness, derived from the use of simple contours and of the lack of detail. However, a more attentive observation reveals the artist’s ability to capture the sitter’s essence, frame of mind and spirit, in an attempt to unmask her deepest feelings, whether joyful or melancholic.