Willem de Kooning was born on 04.24.1904 in the city of Rotterdam (Netherlands). Driven by a keen, penetrating mind, strong work ethic, and stubborn self-doubt - combined with a determination to achieve - the charismatic de Kooning has become one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century.
Studying and moving to the USA
Showing interest in art from an early age, Willem already 12 years old worked as an apprentice in a leading design company and with her support entered the evening school of the prestigious Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Technology, which in 1998 was renamed in his honor, received the name Willem de Academy Kuninga.
In 1926, with the help of his friend Leo Kogan, he sailed on a ship to the United States and settled in New York. At that moment, he did not seek the life of an artist. Rather, like many young Europeans, he had his own version of the American dream (big money, girls, cowboys, etc.). Nevertheless, after a short work as a house painter, he became a professional artist, immersed in the creativity and the New York world of art, making friends with such famous personalities as Stuart Davis and Arshile Gorky.
New york school
In 1936, during the Great Depression, de Kooning worked in the mural department of the US Public Works Office. The experience gained convinced him to devote himself entirely to painting.
By the end of the 50s. de Kooning and his contemporaries in New York, including Franz Cline, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, became famous for their rejection of accepted stylistic norms such as regionalism, surrealism and cubism by dissolving the relationship between foreground and background and using paint to create emotional, abstract gestures. This movement was called differently - and the painting of action, and abstract expressionism, and just a New York school.
Prior to that, Paris was considered the center of the avant-garde, and it was difficult for this group of ambitious American artists to compete with the innovative character of Picasso's work. But de Kooning said bluntly: Picasso is a man to be transcended. Willem and his group finally managed to attract attention - they were responsible for the historical shift in attention to New York in the years after the Second World War.
Among his peers, de Kooning became known as the “artist of artists”, and then received recognition in 1948 with his first mono-exhibition in the gallery of Charles Egan at the age of 44 years. Here were presented paintings densely crafted with oil and enamel, including his famous black and white canvases. This exhibition was important for Cunning's reputation.
Shortly afterwards, in 1951, he managed to make one of his first major sales when he received the Logan Medal and the prize from the Chicago Art Institute for his grandiose abstraction of Excavations (1950). This is perhaps one of the most important paintings of the twentieth century. Then, de Kooning enlisted the support of two leading New York critics - Clement Greenberg, and then Harold Rosenberg.
Abstraction Abstraction
The success of Willem de Kooning did not weaken his need for research and experimentation. In 1953, he shocked the world of art by presenting a series of aggressively painted figurines, commonly known as "Women." These images were more like characters or icons than portraits of people.
His return to the figures was perceived by some as a betrayal of abstract expressionist principles. He lost the support of Greenberg, but Rosenberg remained convinced of its significance. The Museum of Modern Art in New York took the change in Kooning's style as progress in his work and in 1953 acquired the painting Woman I (1950–1952). What one seemed stylistically reactionary to others was clearly avant-garde.
A sharp rise to fame in 1948–1953. was only the first act in a remarkable career as an artist. Despite the fact that many of his contemporaries developed their own mature authorial style, de Kooning's inquisitive spirit did not allow such a restriction. Struggling with a commitment to any dogma, he continued to learn new styles and techniques, often challenging his own. “It is necessary to change in order to remain the same,” is one of his frequently quoted sayings.
In a 1954 painting by Marilyn Monroe Willem de Kooning reduced the pop icon to its most recognizable features - a black fly and a wide red mouth.
From drawing to engraving
De Kooning was equally comfortable using both paper and canvas. But the first ensured the immediate appeal of the result. From September 1959 to January 1960, the artist remained in Italy, and during this time he produced a large number of experimental black and white works on paper, known as "Roman drawings." Returning, he set off for the West Coast. In San Francisco, de Kooning worked with brush and ink, but, more interestingly, he experimented with lithography. Two resulting prints (known as Waves I and Waves II) have become vivid examples of abstract expressionist engravings.
Fight directions
Towards the end of the 1950s, Willem de Kooning turned from women to female landscapes, and then to what seemed like a return to a “pure” abstraction. These works were respectively called "urban", "alley" and "pastoral" landscapes. A series of landscapes by Willem de Kooning - Police Gazette, Gotham News, Parc Rosenberg, Door to the River, Suburb in Havana, etc. But he never completely left the world of real objects for the sake of pure abstraction. In 1960, he said that “today, if you think about it, it’s absurd to create an image of a person with paints, because we have this problem - to do it or not to do it. But suddenly inaction becomes even more absurd. Therefore, I am afraid that I will have to follow my desires. " The human figure has asserted itself, now in its more carnal form.
Moving to Long Island
In 1963, de Kooning moved from New York to Springs in East Hampton on Long Island. Manipulating space as a sculptor, he designed and built an airy, light-filled studio and a house in a quiet wooded area, where he worked in the 60s, before finally moving there in 1971.
The light and landscape of East Hampton reminded him of his native Holland, and a change in the environment affected his work. The colors softened, the figures became more arbitrary and in the body, instead of angry and toothy women, more dancing and attracting girls appeared. He continued to experiment with paints, adding water and safflower oil. This made them slippery and wet, which for many seemed extremely difficult to work with.
70s experiments
During a short trip to Italy in 1969, after meeting with a friend Herzl Emmanuel de Kooning, he created 13 small clay figures, which were then cast in bronze.
In the early 70's, he studied both sculpture and lithography, while at the same time continuing to paint and paint. During this period, more graphic elements appeared in his paintings. Some were carried out by simple application of paint without using a more picturesque approach. This could happen under the influence of Japanese art and design, which he met during his stay in Japan in early 1970. His lithographs seem to reflect the influence of Japanese ink and calligraphy, conveying a sense of open space, which, in turn, is reflected in some paintings by de Kooning.
The decade of the 1970s was marked first by experiments with materials, and then by a breakthrough. Thanks to or contrary to his creative search, in the late 1970s he found a fruitful period during which the artist created voluptuous, densely colored works that are one of his most sensual abstractions.
Serene 80s
Visual wrestling are markers of most of Willem de Kooning’s career. In the last decade, he was lucky to dispel some of them. Moving away from the methodology of grinding, drawing, layering, scraping, turning the canvas and repeatedly indenting to view each change, the reduced and sometimes serene paintings of the 80s can be seen as the final synthesis of curvature and abstraction, painting and drawing, as well as balance and imbalance.
From year to year during the 1980s, the artist explored new forms of pictorial space, and this is demonstrated by the works of Willem de Kooning with ethereal ribbon-shaped passages or with consoles, through which straight lines can float or stop abruptly and balance on wide open areas, or crowded, bold, lyrical spaces. Brightly colored, mostly linear elements are compared with finely tinted white areas. With his frank inclination to embrace the everyday, de Kooning was free to portray the non-intellectual, worldly, or humorous characters that are sometimes tangible in his abstract paintings. This again illustrates his persistent pursuit of freedom from doctrinaire ideas about what art should be.
All this is reflected in the spontaneity and simplicity of the laid-back names that he gave to several works in 1980: “Key and Parade”, “Cat Meow” and “Deer and Lampshade”. De Kooning reached a more open and less disturbing point in his artistic career.
Last years
De Kooning painted his last picture in 1991. He died in 1997 at the age of 92 after an unusually long, rich and successful career. De Kooning never stopped exploring and expanding the possibilities of his craft, leaving a lasting impression on American and international artists and art lovers.
Worldwide recognition
During his life, the artist Willem de Kooning was awarded many honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. His works have participated in thousands of exhibitions and are in permanent collections of many of the best art institutions, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam , Tate Modern in London, the Canberra National Gallery of Australia, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Institute of Art, the Hirschhorn Museum and the Washington National Gallery of Art.
Willem de Kooning's painting "Exchange" (1955) at the Sotheby's auction in 1989 was sold for $ 20.6 million. In the same year he received the Imperial Prize of the Japan Art Association. And in 2006, the painting “Woman III” was acquired for $ 137.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings in the world.