Alex Katz - Woman With Umbrella - Offset Litho

Intimate, delicate, and deeply atmospheric, Blue Umbrella I, 1972, sheds light on Alex Katz’s preferred model and muse, his wife Ada. The first iteration from a series of two, this sumptuous, moody canvas is exceptional both in pictorial rendition, and in subject matter. On the one hand, it employs Katz’s characteristic approach to figuration – cool in appearance and hyper-meticulous in design; on the other, it boasts a theme that the artist has profusely alluded to throughout his career, turning Ada’s repeated appearance into something of a leitmotif. Signifying the importance of the series within the artist’s oeuvre, Blue Umbrella I’s sister painting Blue Umbrella II – a quasi-exact rendering of the present composition in larger dimensions – was used as the front cover for the catalogue of Katz’s major solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, travelling to the Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, in 1986. Musing on the importance and prominence of the painting’s theme – Katz painted his wife more than two hundred times since their marriage in 1958 – Robert Marshall contended that Ada can be read as the perfect, timeless muse: ‘a symbol of beauty, sorrow, mystery, coldness, or desire’ (Robert Marshall, Alex Katz, New York, 1986, p. 22).

Spotlighting Katz’s favourite subject, Blue Umbrella I is a sumptuous example from the artist’s prodigious painterly opus. It is conceived as an ode to his timeless muse, who, despite continuous changes in American society, remained her elegant self for decades – a feat that Robert Storr dubs ‘the mark of her musedom’

This piece is freshly framed and backed. Ready to hang.

Exterior Dimensions: 15"x12"

15" x 12"

18%

Jacob Herman | (203) 703-8762 | jeanjacobsgallery@gmail.com

Pickup Details

Jean Jacobs Gallery

84 Main Street, New Canaan CT 06840

When to Pickup

Saturday, 5/1, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm

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