Rediscovering Alex Katz's 'Swimmer #2"

Painted in 1973, Swimmer #2 belongs to a distinctive moment in Katz’s career, when he was refining the cool, distilled visual language that would come to define his oeuvre. The composition presents a close-cropped profile of his son, Vincent, emerging from rippling water, rendered in luminous planes of color and sweeping, gestural brushwork. The swimmer’s serene expression contrasts with the energetic strokes of water surrounding him, creating a delicate balance between stillness and movement.

Throughout the 1970s, Katz returned to the swimmer motif in a small group of related works, including the oils Swimmer and Swimmer #3, both painted in 1973, as well as the prints The Swimmer (1974) and Olympic Swimmer (1976). Across these works, Katz explored repetition and variation, transforming an ordinary moment of leisure into an image of striking graphic clarity and intimacy.

Within this small body of work, Swimmer #2 has remained remarkably elusive. While related compositions have entered museums and collections and the imagery has circulated in print, this painting has remained in the same private collection since it was acquired directly from Marlborough Godard, Toronto, in 1976. Its return to public view nearly fifty years later offers a rare opportunity to encounter a work that has - until now - remained largely unseen.