What is realistic is a matter of taste, or a matter of instinct…the appearance of things is a variable that most people take as a constant. A. Katz, quoted in L. Cooke, “Negotiating in the Dark,” from Alex Katz: Twenty Five Years of Painting from The Saatchi Collection, London, 1997 Since the 1950's, Alex Katz has been known for his depictions of people, landscapes and interiors. Steering away from the contemporary avant-garde driven by abstraction, his work resonated with 1960’s Pop art and made him into one of the most notorious figurative painters working today. The figures in Three Women gaze frankly towards the viewer. The distinctly detached nature of their facial expressions is heightened by the artifice of the artist's visual language. Set against a monochrome backdrop, the women are strangely cropped above their waists. Katz does away with unnecessary surface detail through a stark economy of means and includes precise areas of color for essential structures of the portrait. Masterfully rendered in the artist's flat, synthetic style, the women seem to be collaged onto the picture plane.