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Blue Umbrella 2-Alex Katz-1

An almost cinematic still, calm and composed, Ada is depicted here in Alex Katz´s latest edition. The wife and muse of the American artist, who has been captured in more than 200 works throughout Katz´s seven-decade long career. This edition is contributing to the narrative of the Blue Umbrella painting series; the Blue Umbrella I, painted in 1978 and the Blue Umbrella II - a rendering of the first painting but in a larger scale, which was used as the catalogue cover of Katz´s traveling retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, and the Center for Fine Arts, in Miami (both in 1986). This figurative depiction is carefully executed, Katz´s 2D painterly brushstrokes offer a minimal essence to the composition. Ada´s almond-shaped eyes, her elegant headscarf bundled and located in the center of the work, it is marrying the only saturated colours of the work, blue and red. Katz´s muse is placed in the middle of a melancholic setting, surrounded by raindrops; both on her foreground and background, each carefully painterly allocated one by one by Katz, reminiscent of Man Ray´s Glass Tears. “Ada for me is like Dora Maar to Picasso. But Ada has better shoulders, and could easily be Miss America.” -Alex Katz The Blue Umbrella is a significant piece in Alex Katz´s oeuvre and also marks it as his auction record, which sold for over $4 million at the Phillips auction house in London, in October 2019.