Image: Alex Katz, ‘Sunrise 1’, 2022, archival pigment ink, 137 × 103 cm, edition of 100 (detail). Courtesy Korff Fine Art, Ilmmünster.
Alex Katz turned 99 on 24 July 2026. The anniversary was marked in the August newsletter of Korff Fine Art, the Ilmmünster art dealership run alongside the Korff-Stiftung, in a short profile rather than an announcement of an exhibition or event.
Katz was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and has worked since the 1950s in a manner the newsletter sums up as clear contours, luminous fields of colour and strongly reduced composition. He became widely known for large-scale portraits of friends and family members, above all of his wife Ada, and his work also takes in landscapes, flowers and glimpses of modern life. The dealer describes him as still artistically active.
Korff Fine Art trades Katz’s work rather than exhibiting it. Its website lists several dozen Katz editions — silkscreens, woodcuts and pigment prints — along with aluminium cut-out sculptures and a few unique works. Two of them appear in the August newsletter: the pigment print ‘Blue Umbrella 2’ (2020), 77 by 116 centimetres from an edition of 150, and ‘Study for Carnation 2’ (2022), an oil on board measuring 40.6 by 30.5 centimetres, signed and titled on the reverse. No exhibition, opening or public programme is attached to the birthday, and the gallery’s own news section carries nothing current.
