Willem de Kooning

1904-1997

The Dutch‐American artist Willem de Kooning is famed for his contributions to the Abstract Expressionist avant‐gardes of the New York School. After moving to America in the 1920s, De
Kooning produced provocatively flat figurative compositions. A pioneer of what became known as ‘action painting’, he soon joined the Abstract Expressionists with his focus now on the material, tactile power of paint and bodily movements. Shocking once more with his move back to figuration in 1953, De Kooning maintained throughout his career a formal originality and gestural freshness that made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

The Dutch‐American artist Willem de Kooning is famed for his contributions to the Abstract Expressionist avant‐gardes of the New York School. A pioneer of what became known as ‘action painting’, he worked alongside artists such as Pollock, Krasner, Kline and Gottlieb, maintaining throughout his career a formal originality and gestural freshness that made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

De Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1904. After leaving formal education in 1916, he attended evening classes at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen (Academy of Fine Arts and Applied Sciences) where he encountered the concurrent artistic experiments of the Jugendstil, the German variant of Art Nouveau. Initially De Kooning was fascinated by the dynamic, organic forms of this style, but soon his studies led him to the Dutch movement De Stijl, which emphasised absolute purity of form and colour, as well as the role of the artist as master creator.

Driven by a unique sense of determination and a strong work ethic, De Kooning decided to travel to the US, boarding the British freighter Shelley as a stowaway in 1926. The following year he was in Manhattan where he was soon absorbed by the lively New York art world, meeting artists such as Davis and Gorky who would greatly influence his own style.

De Kooning’s pre‐war paintings generally depicted human figures, usually men, portrayed in traditional poses yet displaying distorted, flattened anatomies. Introducing abstract elements and biomorphic forms reminiscent of his first Jugendstil experiments, the works from this period were often left with an unfinished appearance. De Kooning’s series of black and white abstract works, produced in the mid‐1940s and exhibited in 1948 at the Charles Egan Gallery, shocked viewers and critics for their radical flattening of pictorial space. This series introduced into his aesthetic the emotive, gestural canvases of the Abstract Expressionist avant‐garde, which dominated the pictorial aesthetic of the 1950s. Rejecting the dominant norms of Surrealism and Cubism, these works undid the connection between figurative planes, focusing on the material, tactile power of paint and bodily movements. Pigments and brushstrokes became integral parts of the figuration, covering surfaces in rough matter that conveyed emotional meanings rather than reproducing recognisable forms.

The appearance of Abstract Expressionist works on the international art scene caused a groundbreaking shift in artistic and critical discourses. Yet, in 1953, De Kooning shocked the art world once again, returning to figuration in his series of canvases known as the ‘Women’. Aggressive and grotesque, these works proved controversial due to the artist’s perceived betrayal of Abstract Expressionist principles. De Kooning, however, always defended his rejection of all orthodoxies, stating that ‘you have to change to stay the same’. By the end of the decade he moved away from female subjects, producing a series of exuberant, semi‐abstract canvases known as the ‘Urban,’ ‘Parkway’ and ‘Pastoral’ landscapes.

De Kooning continued painting from his Long Island studio throughout the 1980s, producing large, simplified abstract works featuring bright colours and restrained gestures. Suffering from dementia in his later years, he died in 1997 at the age of 92. De Kooning’s paintings, however, remain influential to this day, fascinating painters, critics and art lovers for their unrestrained gestural qualities and radical disregard of divisions between figuration and abstraction.

POEMS BY FRANK O’HARA

Willem de Kooning

Following the death of poet and curator Frank O’Hara, the Museum of Modern Art, New York published a memorial edition of his poetry titled ‘In Memory of My Feelings’, illustrated by the artists he was closest to, including Willem de Kooning. Alongside the likes of Lichtenstein, Motherwell and Johns, De Kooning produced a series of black drawings on mylar to honour the passing of his brilliant friend.

Produced after the completion of his celebrated ‘Women’ series, a group of more figurative works which he controversially began in the early 1950s following a period focused entirely on abstraction, ‘Poems by Frank O’Hara’ consists of 18 charcoal drawings. Through his economic use of expressive, tonal strokes, De Kooning depicts apparently male forms often wearing hats and buttoned-down coats as they galivant across the pages. Sketchily rendered, De Kooning’s men oscillate between figuration and abstraction, offering viewers just enough to decipher the form before it fades back into abstraction.

In 1988, 17 of De Kooning’s 18 drawings were translated into lithographic plates which were then printed into editions under the supervision of MoMA and the artist. These prints were then assembled into a new book produced by The Limited Editions Club, which consists of the 13 poems by O’Hara which De Kooning found most moving, cementing once more the relationship between these two great creatives.

WOMEN

Willem de Kooning

From 1950–53, following his emergence on the Abstract Expressionist scene, Willem de Kooning shocked the art world with his perceived betrayal of the dominant visual language of New York in favour of figuration. In his ‘Women’ paintings, De Kooning depicted violent and grotesque female forms set against the backdrop of abstract and aggressive swaths of paint, constituting his most famous series of works.

Whilst De Kooning moved on from his ‘Women’ paintings, he continued to render women in his charcoal drawings and lithographs. In these largely black and white works, the artist’s line is no longer harsh and menacing but instead nervous, the bodies he rendered entirely devoid of straight or life-like lines. As dictated in ‘Two Women’ (1973), these women are no longer grotesque and violent but are instead almost cartoon-like.

An artist who faced much criticism for returning to figuration, what was then considered an obsolete practice, De Kooning reveals in his ‘Women’ works on paper the constant pull he experienced between abstraction and figuration. Whilst his women are recognisable as such, the curves of their body, further enhanced by the artist’s loose lines, nonetheless arrest and perhaps even confuse viewers with their abstraction. In these works, De Kooning offers viewers just enough information to discern the basics of their forms. The outlines of their bodies are recognisable, yet their bodies and the clothes they wear are paired down to their essentials, with each form devoid of definitive identifying features. In some works, De Kooning more actively engages with abstraction as in ‘Two Women’, with the woman to the viewer’s right seemingly a character out of Surrealism, her legs apparently floating and devoid of a complete body.

BRONZE SCULPTURES

Willem de Kooning

In 1969, at the age of 65, Willem de Kooning travelled to Rome where he unexpectedly began his foray into sculpture. Spending time with the sculptor Herzl Emanuel who himself owned a foundry, De Kooning was given a studio space by the artist to begin his experimentations with clay. By the end of his stay in Rome, De Kooning had produced 13 small-scale moulds which were converted into bronze sculptures reminiscent of the curvy forms that define his figurative work.

De Kooning found deep enjoyment out of working with clay and its tactile experience, characterising it as ‘painting in three dimensions’. Believing that his hands were too small to produce the desired broad, expressive and exaggerated markings, he wore oversized workman’s gloves, which also had the added benefit of controlling the slippery clay. Often sculpting with his eyes closed, De Kooning worked and reworked his clay to create incredibly dynamic moulds.

The resulting works, which largely take as their subjects women and seated women, imitate in real space the forms De Kooning depicted in his works on paper. Like the drawings and lithographs from his ‘Women’ series, the sculptural forms are fixated in a blurred boundary between abstraction and figuration. These bronze forms seem only just identifiable as human bodies, apparently caught in a state of apparition as they fade back into abstraction.

Upon returning to New York, De Kooning reflected on his moulds and sculptures with disappointment. However, he considered enlarging some of them and indeed succeed in doing so after Henry Moore praised De Kooning’s bronzes as having ‘such strength, such nervous energy’.