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This exhibition features thirty-two works spanning Willem de Kooning’s long career. Several drawings from the 1930s and early 1940s exemplify the tension between abstraction and figuration that defined his art, first in his portraits of men and then, more famously, in his depictions of the female form, including the Ingresque Reclining Nude ...
Included are several of his most celebrated drawings from the 1930s, including a 1937 study for his World’s Fair mural, his 1938 portrait of the art critic Harold Rosenberg, and the Ingresque Reclining Nude (Juliet Browner) (c. 1938), one of his first female nudes.
Willem de Kooning (/ d ə ˈ k uː n ɪ ŋ / də KOO-ning, [2] Dutch: [ˈʋɪləm də ˈkoːnɪŋ]; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam , in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. [ 3 ]
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- Childhood and Early Training
- Mature Period
- Later Years and Death
- The Legacy of Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1904, and his parents divorced when he was three. His mother, Cornelia Nobel, ran a bar and largely raised de Kooning on her own. He found his artistic vocation early and left school when he was twelve to apprentice at a commercial design and decorating firm. He then went on to study at ...
In the mid-1940s, De Kooning began a series of black and white abstractions, reportedly because he could not afford expensive pigments and had to turn to cheaper household enamels. With the pared-down color palette and the radical flattening of pictorial space, these abstractions, shown at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1948, portended the rise of Abs...
Thomas Hess described the settings for de Kooning's Women as "no-environment," indicating their ambiguous space, and his larger abstractions from mid-1950s seemed part and parcel of the gritty urban environment in which de Kooning lived. By the late 1950s, however, he was beginning to show interest in a new type of scenery. He began a series of Abs...
While Jackson Pollock has been extolled as the most important and influential Abstract Expressionist and influenced the likes of Allan Kaprow, many young painters at the time found that appropriating Pollock's process of painting tended to produce paintings that looked like Pollock's, but de Kooning's use of color and gestural application of paint,...
- American
- April 24, 1904
- Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- March 19, 1997
Willem de Kooning ( də KOO-ning, Dutch: [ˈʋɪləm də ˈkoːnɪŋ]; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried.
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View Willem de Kooning’s 3,486 artworks on artnet. Find an in-depth biography, exhibitions, original artworks for sale, the latest news, and sold auction prices. See available prints and multiples, paintings, and works on paper for sale and learn about the artist.
