Last chance to see - Alex Katz exhibits portraits of family and friends

Following Alex Katz’s exhibition at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in London, which featured recent portrait paintings of the artist’s friends and family, Katz’s distinctive paintings have transferred to the National Portrait Gallery to be the focus of Alex Katz Portraits - only on show for another week (until 21 September).

This significant show explores the portrait genre through a study of Katz’s works, noted for their restrained flat style, even light and minimalism.

Katz’s large-scale portraits hold the viewer’s gaze and create a dialogue between image and abstraction. Katz demonstrates his notion of the portrait with scale and abrupt cinematic cropping and broad areas of colour, which are iconic and enduring features of his work.

The centerpiece of the show is One Flight Up (1968), an early three dimensional group portrait of the New York intelligentsia at a cocktail party. The work is made up of thirty subjects seen in two-dimensions but presented as aluminium cut-outs on a freestanding platform.

Already attracting just as much interest is a new portrait of Anna Wintour, legendary editor of US Vogue magazine. Wintour, famous for her love of colour and not usually seen without her signature black sunglasses, is painted in a softer light against a yellow background, a new departure for Katz. Wintour said of her first experience sitting for a painting: ‘I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend the afternoon. We talked for two hours while he worked, and I was pleased to see that he used a lot of colour, which I adore’.