Williem de Kooning
Born – Rotterdam, Netherlands 1904
Died – Long Island, USA 1997
Williem de Kooning was apprenticed to a firm of commercial artists at the age of twelve. In 1925, he received his diploma from the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and emigrated to America. He set himself up in New York, where the skills he had acquired enabled him to work as a house painter and commercial artist. He met and established a firm friendship with the Armenian artist, Arshile Gorky. They shared a studio and by 1936 de Kooning was painting full time. Gorky’s involvement with the Surrealist movement exerted a notable influence on de Kooning’s work. Black and white paintings of the late 1940s gave way to a series of paintings of women. Although he was respected by fellow artists, it was not until the early 1950s that de Kooning’s paintings began to sell. The energetic, gestural qualities of paintings such as The Visit established de Kooning as a notable figure among the Abstract Expressionists. Veering on abstraction, they transform the figure while retaining classical elements. De Kooning remained faithful to the interpretation of identifiable subject matter – the figure or landscape. Even his late reductive paintings derive from his experience of man’s relationship with nature.
Masterpieces:
- Rosy-Fingered Dawn at Louise Point
- Woman I
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About williem de kooning
Ellsworth Kelley: A Calendar for 1992
Williem De Kooning
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Willen de Kooning, Paintings and Sculpture 1971-1983
Williem & POUND, Ezra De Kooning
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