Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), American Abstract Expressionist painter, who had a major international influence on later art styles. Born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, de Kooning left school at the age of 12 and was apprenticed to a firm of commercial artists and decorators. He also received formal art training at the Rotterdam Academy. In 1926 he went to the United States and worked for a time as a house painter and later as a commercial artist. During the 1930s he painted murals for the Federal Arts Project of the Work Projects Administration. In 1948, in New York, he had his first solo exhibition of black-and-white abstractions; the show established him as one of the leading members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. The term “action painting” was first applied to de Kooning’s work, in reference to his vigorous, gestural, and very visible brushstrokes. Two of the outstanding canvases of this period are Asheville (1948, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.) and Excavation (1950, Art Institute of Chicago).

In 1953 de Kooning exhibited six paintings entitled Woman, demonic figures painted in harsh, thick colours. The series was innovative in joining figurative painting and abstract art. In the late 1950s de Kooning turned to more abstract work, evoking landscape forms; after that he alternated between figurative and abstract styles and at times combined them. Besides painting, he made lithographs and, from 1969, bronze figural sculptures. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1983-1984. A partial retrospective was held at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1995.