Alex Katz – Yellow Flags on Brown

Alex Katz’s Yellow Flags on Brown (2023) is a signed archival pigment ink print measuring 61 × 76 cm. The composition presents bold, simplified yellow flag blossoms set against a rich brown ground, punctuated by sharply defined green leaves. With flattened forms and luminous color contrasts, Katz distills the floral motif to its essential shapes, emphasizing clarity, surface, and immediacy.

A leading figure in postwar American art, Katz is known for his crisp contours and reductive approach to figuration. In this limited edition print, the flowers appear monumental and graphic, hovering between natural observation and stylized abstraction. The saturated yellow against the dark field heightens spatial tension while maintaining the calm, declarative presence characteristic of Katz’s mature practice.

Executed in 2023 in a limited edition of 150, this fine art print is hand-signed and numbered by the artist, offering a refined example of Katz’s enduring engagement with landscape and botanical imagery.

Alex Katz (born 1927 in New York City) is a seminal figure in postwar American art, working across painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Developing his distinctive style in deliberate contrast to Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, Katz is known for his bright, figurative artworks featuring flattened landscapes, marine scenes, flowers, portraits, and animals. Characterized by bold color fields, wide brushstrokes, and precise compositions, his artwork merges abstraction and representation into what art historian Robert Storr described as “a new and distinctive type of realism.”

Often cited as a key precursor to Pop Art, Katz draws on everyday visual culture, including advertising and cinema, creating imagery that is both immediately accessible and formally rigorous. Printmaking has been central to his practice since the 1950s, encompassing silkscreen prints, linoleum cuts, lithographs, etchings, and contemporary pigment prints, each reflecting his technical mastery and refined visual language.

Over the course of his career, Alex Katz has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions worldwide. His artworks are held in major institutional collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Albertina, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, with a notable exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2022.