Willem de Kooning

If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself and wonder where my fingers are—that is all the space I need as a painter. —Willem de Kooning, 1951 Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) was a first-generation member of the New York School, a group of American artists who rose to prominence in the mid- to late 1940s and were noted for their dynamic, “allover” approach to abstract painting. Over a career that spanned seven decades, de Kooning’s singular contributions to abstraction and figuration set him apart from his peers, and his influence drastically shifted the direction of postwar American painting. Born on April 24, 1904, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, de Kooning enrolled at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques at the age of thirteen, while simultaneously working as an apprentice at a commercial and decorative arts firm. He studied drawing at the academy in the evenings, and at the design firm he learned about decorative painting, creating marble and wood-grain patterns, as well as lettering. This multifaceted education equipped him with a unique skill set that would inform his mature art. In 1926 he arrived in the United States, having stowed away on a British freighter, and settled in New York the following year. It was there, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, that he would first encounter European modernism in depth, prompting him to make still lifes inspired by Henri Matisse. He would also soon meet artists Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and John Graham, who would become close friends. In 1935 de Kooning joined the Federal Art Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The experience led him to devote himself to painting. In these early years in New York, his work fluctuated between biomorphic abstraction and more traditional depictions of the figure, from Depression-era men to classical portraits of his wife, the former Elaine Fried, an artist he married in 1943. This seamless transition between styles and subject matter—and resistance to easy categorization—would become hallmarks of de Kooning’s art throughout his long career. In the 1940s de Kooning further developed his particular style of abstraction, frequently creating complex compositions from fragments of figural drawings. These works culminated in his famous black-and-white paintings, which comprised the majority of his first solo exhibition—presented in April 1948 at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York—and were brought to conclusion with larger-scale paintings including Attic (1949) and Excavation (1950). On completion of the latter, de Kooning embarked on the series of Woman paintings for which he is most famous. Six Woman paintings and related drawings were shown together in 1953 at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, provoking heated discussion among artists, curators, and critics about the validity of representational art in the era of abstraction. In the second half of the 1950s, de Kooning’s style shifted into abstraction based on landscapes, which he painted with muscular brushstrokes, using what has come to be referred to as “the full arm sweep.” The evolution of these abstract landscapes, from what the curator and critic Thomas Hess termed “urban,” to “parkway” and then “pastoral” over the course of more than five years, mirrored de Kooning’s transition to country life. After spending increasing amounts of time on the East End of Long Island, he designed and built a home and studio there, moving to the area permanently in 1963. Inspired by the region’s diffused light, de Kooning shifted his palette to lighter, rococo hues of pinks, yellows, and blues, and he soon embarked on a new Woman series, this time depicting women exulting in the idyllic landscape. In the last two decades of his career, de Kooning remained a tireless innovator, working in printmaking and sculpture and consistently reinventing his painting style. His works of the mid- to late 1970s are noted for their highly fluid, jewel-toned abstractions of landscapes and seascapes. In the 1980s he gradually altered his method to achieve a minimalistic, yet still highly complex, new style, one he continued to explore through his very last paintings. De Kooning was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and has been the subject of numerous major exhibitions and publications. In 1950 he represented the United States at the 25th Biennale de Venezia and was one of five artists highlighted at the American Pavilion in 1954. In 1968 Thomas Hess organized the first museum retrospective of his work for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which traveled domestically and to Europe. De Kooning retrospectives have also been held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and touring venues (1983–84); National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and touring venues (1994–95, paintings only); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011–12).