Ada

Alex Katz began painting portraits of Ada Del Moro when they met in 1957. Ada Del Moro soon became Ada Katz, his wife and timeless muse. Over the course of their 60-year marriage, Katz has painted more than 250 portraits of Ada in simple, idealized styles. Sometimes Ada is seen large-scale in a close-up; other times, she appears multiplied in the same painting, or on sculptural painted cut-outs. With his trademark smooth brushwork and almost minimalist representations of bodies and faces, Katz lends his brush to capturing the gloss of outside appearances, eschewing the emotion-based expressionistic work of his peers. Seen next to Ada, his oil paintings capture some elements of her face, but they often bear little resemblance. When asked whether these portraits of Ada actually look like her, Katz responded, “Nothing does.”