Alex Katz’s life is filled with quirky anecdotes of living illegally in a New York loft, and inheriting his competitiveness and love of zoot suits from his father.

He is best known for his perseverance, painting against the tide despite negative criticism in the beginning of his career. Critic, Clement Greenberg, the hype-man of the abstract expressionists, is said to have gone out of his way to point out how bad he thought Katz was.” For Greenberg, the influence of commerce, movies and large billboards in Katz’s case, was everything that was wrong with art. So of course, he hated pop art and Katz had been painting in this style since the '50s, even before Warhol made it cool. As Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl paints a picture of the cool girl, writing on Katz seems to paint the picture of the cool artist.

But, what’s cooler than being cool? Being Ada Katz, the artist’s wife and muse. The artist has painted Ada more than 200 times, making her one of the most painted faces in recent art history. At the age of 90, the artist claims he is painting better than ever, and it’s certain that we can expect to see more of Ada. Much has been written about the doomed lives of artist’s muses. A Pre-Raphaelite muse, Elisabeth Siddal, poisoned herself. Many others have met similar fates including Modigliani’s lover, Jeanne Hébuterne, who threw herself out a fifth story window after the artist’s death. Beyond the paintings, many muses seem to fade. But, not Ada.

Ada Katz was a research scientist at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research when she met Alex Katz. You won’t find her on linkedIn but her career history is pretty impressive. She has studied biology, chemistry, virology, botany, and pathology. After receiving her master’s in cellular biology from NYU, she studied tumor genetics at the University of Milan as a Fulbright fellow. A female research scientist in the 1950s is not unheard of, but rare and admirable considering the obstacles she overcame. After leaving her career in science, she dabbled in the non-profit sector. In 1979, she also co-founded the Eye and Ear Theater, an artists’ and poets’ collaborative theater production company. It’s clear why Katz admires his life partner. According to Katz, Ada was a total babe but there were only about three guys she could’ve related to in New York when they met. Katz admits that he got lucky when his muse chose him.