Portrait of a Woman
1973
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 37.78 × 50.8 cm (14 7/8 × 20 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of Olga Hirshhorn)
Accession Number
2015.19.3385
Art Historical Context
Behold Alex Katz's *Portrait of a Woman* (1973), a striking graphite drawing on wove paper that exemplifies the artist's signature approach to portraiture. Measuring 37.78 × 50.8 cm (14 7/8 × 20 in.), this intimate work captures a poised female subject with Katz's characteristic economy of line and flattened form, hallmarks of his post-Pop Art style. Katz, a leading American figurative painter born in 1927, often drew inspiration from everyday figures—friends, family, and urban life—rendering them with cool detachment and bold cropping reminiscent of film stills and advertisements. The choice...
About the Artist
Alex Katz
Alex Katz, born on July 24, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian émigré parents, grew up in St. Albans, Queens, in a family immersed in the arts—his mother had been an actress in Yiddish theater. Katz honed his skills at Woodrow Wilson High School's arts program before enrolling at The Cooper Union in 1946, where he studied painting under Morris Kantor, absorbing modern art theories and techniq...