Alex Katz's preparatory cartoons on view in Milan for the first time

For the first time in Italy, Monica De Cardenas gallery in Milan is presenting Alex Katz's preparatory cartoons, on view until February 8, 2025. The American painter (born 1927 in New York) has long used the Renaissance technique of pouncing cartoons, employed by Raphael and Leonardo, to transfer outlines onto canvas. Despite his works being held by major museums (MoMA, Metropolitan, Whitney, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Albertina), Katz had never exhibited these drawings until Albertina director Klaus Albrecht Schröder convinced him. The exhibition, titled "Alex Katz. Cartoons and drawings," features works from 1997 to 2023 and runs concurrently with Milano Drawing Week (until December 1, 2024), organized by the Ramo collection. Katz selected a work by Michelangelo Pistoletto to dialogue with his own. The cartoons depict faces and busts of family and close friends, balancing abstraction and realism. Katz, who trained at Cooper Union School of Art, developed a figurative style in the 1960s that merged Abstract Expressionist influences (Pollock, De Kooning) with mass media and photography, anticipating Pop Art.