Willem de Kooning

WILLEM DE KOONING (Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1904 - Long Island, USA, 1997).
Untitled, 1965.
Oil, acrylic and wax on paper.
Signed and dedicated ("to de Gerb, Good Luck, de Kooning") in the lower right corner.
Provenance: gift from the artist to the first owner, who in turn put it up for auction at Christie's in 2003.
According to purchase dated 12/20/2004.
Exhibitions: Galerie Rive Gauche de Paris (Gallery labels on the back of the painting).
Measurements: 50 x 65 cm.

This is an important work by Willem de Kooning, made in 1965, which is located within a particularly rich and transitional stage in his career. Despite its modest size, it displays on the surface an intense gestural energy and chromatic vibrancy that are hallmarks of de Kooning's visual language in the 1960s. By the mid-1960s, Willem de Kooning was already an established figure in Abstract Expressionism, having achieved international fame in the previous decades with his iconic series of women ("Woman" series). However, at this time his production began to undergo a significant transformation. He had left behind the urban frenzy of New York to move to East Hampton, Long Island, in search of a more serene environment. This new geography influences his painting: his forms become more open, the colors brighter and the gestures less anguished. Although he maintains the expressive gestures that characterize him, his work begins to suggest more clearly the luminosity of the landscape, the sea and the atmosphere of the natural environment.

In this work, the white background functions as a sort of negative space that enhances the energy of the brushstrokes applied with controlled violence. The forms do not refer directly to recognizable objects, but there is an evocation of natural elements (earthy colors, greens, solar yellows) that could abstractly allude to the landscape or the body, recurring themes in his career. The materials used (oil, acrylic and wax) allow for a rich superimposition of textures. There are areas where the paint is applied thickly, almost in impasto, reminiscent of European informalism, and other more diluted or transparent areas that evoke an almost watery lightness. The grayish line in the form of a framework suggests an internal structure that orders the visual chaos, a kind of compositional skeleton that recalls the biomorphic compositions of the fifties but with greater spontaneity. This work well embodies the spirit of de Kooning's painting in the mid-1960s, when he begins to work in more atmospheric and open registers, anticipating his later work of the 1970s, in which forms will float in almost liquid and translucent spaces.

Willem de Kooning is one of the main representatives of American abstract expressionism, specifically of gestural painting or "action painting". He began his training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam, where he remained for eight years, and in 1920 he began working with the artistic director of a department store. In 1926 he emigrated to the United States clandestinely, settling in New Jersey as a house painter. Only a year later he moved to Manhattan and took up painting again, at this first moment within a figurative language that reflected the influence of the Parisian school and Mexican muralism. At the beginning of the following decade he began to experiment with abstraction, using organic forms and simple geometric compositions, an opposition of disparate formal elements that would be a constant in his work from then on. From the forties onwards, de Kooning became increasingly identified with abstract expressionism, and by the mid-fifties he was already recognized as one of its most important representatives. His work will be oriented towards complex and agitated abstractions, which reintroduce the color of his figurative stage and manage to solve the problems of composition by free association with which he had struggled for years. Now fully established, from the 1950s onwards he would combine his artistic practice with teaching, teaching summer courses at Black Mountain College in North Carolina with John Cage, Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and also at the Yale University School of Art. Although de Kooning had painted women regularly in the early 1940s, and again between 1947 and 1949, it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively, at the height of his artistic creativity. In the summer of that year he began his most famous series, which began with "Woman I" (MOMA, New York) and focused on the figure of women. Later he returned to a certain lyricism with works such as "Whose name was writ in water", and from 1970 he began to make large sculptures induced by Henry Moore. During his last years he became more and more inclined to create large clay sculptures. In 1960 he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in Washington, in 1964 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 1968 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Arts. Outside the United States he was recognized with the Max Beckmann Prize in Frankfurt am Main (1984). De Kooning is represented in the world's leading modern art museums, including MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Smithsonian in Washington, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Tate Gallery in London, among many others.