By 1965, anyone in the New York art community was looking at prints.
They were a challenge, a new field in which artists could push to
overcome limitations within a traditionally rigid and hierarchial
medium. It was at this juncture that Alex Katz, with typical
deliberation and thoroughness, brought his own unique attitude to the
printmaking arena. He has created icons of contemporary American
printmaking. Looking beyond such high points to his career, a
progression of mastery from discipline to discipline can be traced,
usually with unconventional ideas about what each medium should produce.
He does not arrive at a printed image through spontaneous
experimentation with the particular medium. When he enters a printmaking
situation, he has already determined what he wants and will bend the
medium to his purposes. Unlike painters who see printmaking as a
separate activity, Katz always views it in the context of his entire
corpus of work: „Prints are supposed to be, with my work, the final
synthesis of a painting.“ Barry Walker: Alex Katz, A Print Retrospective. The Brooklyn Museum, 1987
