Alex Katz

On show are more than 40 large canvases by one of the greatest living American artists: Alex Katz. Portraits and landscapes are the focus of a colourful journey that celebrates the beauty of life.

From an idea by Vittorio Sgarbi. Edited by Denis Isaia

2022 is the year of Alex Katz: three major monographs are dedicated to the artist by the Guggenheim in New York (from 16 August), the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation in Madrid (from 11 June) and the Mart in Rovereto, from 15 May to 18 September.

“The Sweet Life” is an exhibition that the Mart dedicates to the master of contemporary painting Alex Katz. Born in New York in 1927, he experimented with different media: painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking. The exhibition features 50 works, large- and extra-large format pieces created between the 1990s and today, that illustrate the artist’s maturity period.

Often associated with the Pop Art movement, Katz reworks the references of mass culture, American society, television, cinema and advertising. At the same time, he appropriates minimalist principles, stripping them of their ideological rigidity and focusing on the purely formal characteristics that define collective taste, lifestyle and, ultimately, our relationship with our surroundings.

The Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Sagep Editori with a text by Mart President Vittorio Sgarbi, an essay by art critic Alberto Fiz, reproductions of the works, and a short anthology of critical texts selected from the artist’s study of historical and more recent texts. An interview collected in March ’97 by the British art critic and curator David Sylvester completes the work.