Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning , 1904-97, American painter, b. Netherlands; studied Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. De Kooning immigrated to the United States, arriving as a stowaway in 1926 and settling in New York City, where he worked on the Federal Arts Project (1935). He began experiments with abstraction as early as 1928, but continued to produce realistic paintings throughout the 1930s. Influenced by Arshile Gorky , de Kooning forged a powerful abstract style and in the 1940s became a leader of abstract expressionism . In his monumental series of the early 1950s entitled Woman, he reintroduced a representational element. Woman I (1951-52; Mus. of Modern Art, New York City), with its startling ferocity, brought him considerable notice and some notoriety. He later reverted chiefly to nonfigurative work. During the 1960s he also produced more paintings of women as well as many works with landscape elements, and in the 1970s he created a dazzling group of painterly abstractions.

Slashed with color amd formed with eloquent brushstrokes, de Kooning's often huge canvases are improvisationally executed and charged with great energy; many are widely considered masterpieces of the abstract expressionist movement. His late work (1980-1990) has been the subject of some controversy. Although increasingly affected by Alzheimer's disease during this decade, he produced an impressive body of work, hundreds of large canvases in elegantly composed configurations, their elements pared down, their limited colors forming sinuously intertwining ribbons. In some sense, de Kooning's art had outlived his conscious mind as he continued to create beautifully simplified works of art. He finally stopped painting in mid-1990. He was married to the painter Elaine Fried de Kooning (1920-1989).

Bibliography: See biographies by H. F. Gaugh (1983), L. Hall (1993, repr. 2000), and M. Stevens and A. Swan (2004); studies by H. Rosenberg (1974), D. Waldman (1978 and 1988), D. Cateforis (1994), D. Sylvester et al. (1994), G. Garrels and R. Storr (1995), S. Yard (1997), K. Kertess et al. (1998), C. Morris (1999), and Edvard Liever (2000).

de Kooning, Willem (1904–1997), painter.Born in Rotterdam, Willem de Kooning studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques from age twelve. He immigrated to the United States in 1926 and settled in New York the following year, initially supporting himself as a housepainter and commercial artist. He became a full‐time artist around 1936, first making portraits of unidentified men and then of women. His first solo exhibition, at New York's Charles Egan Gallery in 1948, consisted of painterly abstractions mostly in black and white. By 1950, de Kooning had emerged as a key figure in the Abstract Expressionism movement or “New York School,” although much of his work is arguably not abstract. He is best known for the large paintings of women he first exhibited in 1953. These depictions of women with exaggerated breasts and terrifying, toothy grins were realized with slashing brushstrokes that some critics read as violent assaults on the subjects. These works gave way to abstract urban landscapes in the mid‐1950s, made with strident tones and thick, gouged paint that evokes the gritty textures of New York City streets. By the late 1950s de Kooning had developed a distinctive gestural style that significantly influenced a subsequent generation of painters. In 1963 he moved permanently to East Hampton, Long Island, where he made paintings of women and landscapes inspired by the light of the Atlantic coast. In 1969 de Kooning began to make sculptures; he was also a supremely gifted draftsman. He developed Alzheimer's disease in the mid‐1980s.
See also Painting: Since 1945.

Bibliography

Harold Rosenberg , Willem de Kooning, 1974.
Marla Prather,, Richard Shiff,, and and David Sylvester , Willem de Kooning: Paintings (exhibition catalog), 1994.

Marla Prather