Vincent and Tony

Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Contemporary Art

1969

Alex Katz
American, born 1927

Since the mid-1950s, Alex Katz has painted cool, spare depictions of landscapes, interiors, and figures. Although Katz’s insistence on figuration initially placed him outside the contemporary avant-garde mainstream, in which abstraction dominated, his inventive resolution of the demands of formalism and representation responded to the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and eventually established him as a leader of the new figurative tradition in painting. Often featuring his wife, family, and friends as portrait subjects, his works emphasize the flatness of the picture plane while remaining determinedly realistic, resulting in highly stylized images that appear at once specific and generic. This painting shows Katz’s son, Vincent, with his boyhood friend Tony.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Contemporary Art

Artist: Alex Katz
Title: Vincent and Tony
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1969
Medium: Oil on linen
Inscriptions: No inscription
Dimensions: 182.9 × 307.8 cm (72 × 120 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Society for Contemporary Art
Reference Number: 1970.414
Copyright: Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Society for Contemporary Art, Society for Contemporary Art 30th Annual Exhibition, exh. cat. (Chicago: Society for Contemporary Art, 1970), n.p., cat. 17.
Walter Hopps, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Thirty-Second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, exh. cat. (Washington D.C.: orcoran Gallery of Art, 1971), 58, cat. 47, 59 (ill.).
Richard Marshall and Robert Rosenblum, Alex Katz, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), 93, pl. 62 (color ill.), 152.
Roberta Smith, “One Painter’s Progress, Unfurled on a Spiral,” New York Times, Oct. 21, 2022, C1, C14–15.
Katherine Brinson and Levi Prombaum, eds., with contributions by David Breslin, Jennifer Y. Chuong, David Max Horowitz, Arthur Jafa, Katie M. Kitamura, Wayne Koestenbaum, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Kevin Lotery, and Prudence Peiffer, Alex Katz: Gathering, exh. cat. (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2022), 48, 146-47, cat. 81 (color ill.).

Art institute of Chicago, Society for Contemporary Art 30th Annual Exhibition, Apr. 22-May 24, 1970, cat.17.
Washington D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Thirty-Second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Feb. 28-Apr. 4, 1971, cat 47.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Alex Katz, Mar. 13–June 15, 1986, pl. 62.
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Alex Katz: Gathering, Oct. 21, 2022–Feb. 20, 2023, cat. 81

The artist; sold through Fischbach Gallery, New York, to the Society for Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1970; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, May 18, 1970.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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