ALEX KATZ

The Coca-Cola Girls are not mere nostalgic advertisements. For Katz, they are images of romance, echoes of an idealized America filtered through both vintage advertising and the history of art. In his words, this blonde girl in a white swimsuit is the heir to the one riding in a red convertible in the ‘50s, but also to the romantic figure in Rembrandt’s The Polish Rider. Far from being a literal citation of advertising aesthetics, the series reinterprets those references through a contemporary gaze—stylized, distilled, and radically refined.

The women portrayed—always in white swimsuits and captured in restrained yet suggestive poses—are figures without a specific narrative, without names or context. As in much of Katz’s work, these are not so much portraits as presences: apparitions suspended in an eternal summer moment. The flat, intense red background acts as an abstract stage, where the figure becomes emblematic—of beauty, of fashion, of a desire unburdened by nostalgia yet full of memory.

The Coca-Cola Girls embody the balance between figuration and abstraction that defines Katz’s oeuvre. His clean lines, refined sense of composition, and masterful use of color make these lithographs function as windows onto an aesthetic that is both sophisticated and accessible. In this exhibition, each image becomes a celebration of the image itself: its evocative power, its magnetism, its ability to endure as a frozen flash in time—a gleaming promise of lightness and style.