Jim Dine isn't the only American to benefit from an exhibition in conjunction with this year's Venice Biennale. One of the others is alive: Alex Katz, presenting his recent works. Two are dead: Willem De Kooning (1904-1997) and Robert Indiana (1928-2018). Ever since Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) won the event's painting prize in 1964 – a historic first for an American – hardly a Biennale has gone by without an artist from the United States being honored. But four at once seems like a record.

"Willem De Kooning Italia" is a large-scale exhibition featuring a wide variety of works. Those that justify the title, mostly on paper, recall the artist's sojourns in Rome and Spoleto (Umbria) in 1959, and again in Rome 10 years later. Whatever their biographical interest, they are overshadowed by paintings that have little or nothing to do with Italy. Here we see De Kooning's constant oscillation between an abstract expressionism based on the rhythm of gestures and colors and a figuration that is more like disfiguration. Men and women suffer the onslaught of violent reds and yellows. The exhibition's other interest lies in the place it devotes to bronzes, less often shown, in particular small-scale nudes: Rodin unleashed.

There's no comparison to be made with Robert Indiana, whose paintings and sculptures are methodically controlled. Using words in capital letters, often arranged in a circle, Indiana constructs symbolic devices that require autobiographical data to understand: Indiana, who was called Robert Clark before he chose this pseudonym, was adopted by parents who divorced when he was 10.

After studying in Chicago, he came to New York in 1955 and met Ellsworth Kelly there in 1956. The two lived together for a time on the Coenties Slip street of Lower Manhattan. As early as 1961, he was writing on his works: "Love," "Joy," "The Sweet Mystery," all allusions to his life. Others use images: the astonishing Mother and Father diptych from 1963-1966, or his steles made of reclaimed wood, marked with symbols and words. Beneath its apparent simplicity, his work is woven with references – and animated by his constant struggle against homophobia and for peace.

Alex Katz, born in 1927, presents three series of recent canvases, often in very large format: seascapes of black water lined with foam; landscapes seen from ground and grass level; and a series of variations based on the fashion designer Claire McCardell (1905-1958), who sought to make fashion inexpensive. What is the link between them? First, there is Katz's taste for risk; he feels it is not shared enough by his colleagues, which he condemns.

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