Willem de Kooning
The Privileged (Untitled XX), 1985
Oil on canvas, 70 × 80 inches (177.8 × 203.2 cm)
© The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Tim Nighswander/IMAGING4ART
Willem de Kooning
Untitled, 1987
Oil on canvas, 77 × 88 inches (195.6 × 223.5 cm)
© The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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.
On the occasion of Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, curated by Cecilia Alemani and comprising paintings from 1944 through 1986 and two sculptures, the Quarterly revisits a conversation between Albert Oehlen and John Corbett from 2013. The pair reflect on de Kooning’s late work and its lasting influence on them.
In tandem with the 60th Biennale di Venezia, the city’s Gallerie dell’Accademia is featuring the exhibition Willem de Kooning and Italy, an in-depth examination of the artist’s time in Italy and of the influence of that experience on his work. On September 20 of last year, the curators of the exhibition, the American Gary Garrels and the Italian Mario Codognato, engaged in a lengthy conversation about the exhibition for a press conference at the museum. An edited transcript of that conversation is published below for the first time.
Lauren Mahony considers a critical four-year period in the painter’s career, examining the technical changes that occurred between his “abstract parkway landscapes” of the late 1950s and the “pastoral landscapes” that succeeded them, as well as the impact on his work of his impending move to Springs, New York.
Wyatt Allgeier discusses the 1984 Arion Press edition of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, featuring prints by Richard Avedon, Alex Katz, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and more.
Picasso biographer Sir John Richardson sits down with Claude Picasso to discuss Claude’s photography, his enjoyment of vintage car racing, and the future of scholarship related to his father, Pablo Picasso.
In 2013, the exhibition Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983–1985 explored the legendary artist’s late work. For the catalogue accompanying the presentation, Jenny Saville spoke on the gestures and elemental elegance of these paintings.
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