Willem de Kooning's Woman V (1952-53), National Gallery of Australia

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist painter, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. is the 114th day of the year (115th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (see link for calendar). ... Nickname: Motto: Sterker door strijd (Stronger through Struggle) Location of Rotterdam Coordinates: , Country Province Government  - Mayor Ivo Opstelten  - Aldermen Jeannette Baljeu Hamit Karakus Orhan Kaya Lucas Bolsius Jantine Kriens Dominic Schrijer Roelf de Boer Leonard Geluk Area [1]  - Total 319 km² (123. ... is the 109th day of the year (110th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ... This article is about the island in New York State. ... Jackson Pollock, No. ... Download high resolution version (1387x1889, 362 KB)Willem de Kooning Woman V 1952-53 This work is copyrighted. ... Download high resolution version (1387x1889, 362 KB)Willem de Kooning Woman V 1952-53 This work is copyrighted. ... National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia is a major art gallery (museum) in Canberra, Australia. ... is the 114th day of the year (115th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (see link for calendar). ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ... American post-World War II art movement. ... Nickname: Motto: Sterker door strijd (Stronger through Struggle) Location of Rotterdam Coordinates: , Country Province Government  - Mayor Ivo Opstelten  - Aldermen Jeannette Baljeu Hamit Karakus Orhan Kaya Lucas Bolsius Jantine Kriens Dominic Schrijer Roelf de Boer Leonard Geluk Area [1]  - Total 319 km² (123. ...

Biography

In the post World War II era, De Kooning painted in the style that is referred to as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Other painters in this category include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still among others. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Jackson Pollock, No. ... Pollocks Galaxy, a part of the Joslyn Art Museums permanent collection. ... The New York School (synonymous with abstract expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York City. ... Controversy swirls over the alleged sale of No. ... Franz Klines Painting Number 2, 1954 Franz Kline (May 23, 1910 - May 13, 1962) was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist group which was centered, geographically, around New York, and temporally, in the 1940s and 1950s; but not limited to that setting. ... Vostanik Manoog Adoyan, (better known as Arshile Gorky) (April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. ... Mark Rothkos painting 1957 # 20 (1957) Mark Rothko born Marcus Rothkowitz (September 25, 1903–February 25, 1970) was a Russian-born American painter and printmaker who is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he rejected not only the label but even being an abstract painter. ... Hans Hofmann (1880 - 1966) was an abstract expressionist painter. ... Robert Motherwell, 1971 Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. ... Painting, Smoking Eating 1972 Oil on Canvas Philip Guston (July 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980) was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. ... Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American artist, a painter, and one of the leading figures in Abstract Expressionism. ...

De Kooning's parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced when he was about five years old, and he was raised by his mother and a stepfather.^[1] His early artistic training included eight years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques.^[2] In the 1920s he worked as an assistant to the art director of a Rotterdam department store.^[3]

In 1926, De Kooning entered the United States as a stowaway on a British freighter, the SS Shelly, to Newport News, Virginia. He then went by ship to Boston, and took a train from Boston to Rhode Island, and eventually settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter until moving to a studio in Manhattan in 1927. In 1929 he met the artist and critic John D. Graham, who would become an important stimulus and supporter.^[4] He also met the painter Arshile Gorky, who became one of De Kooning's closest friends. John D. Graham (1886 – 1961) was a Russian-born American Modernist painter. ... Vostanik Manoog Adoyan, (better known as Arshile Gorky) (April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. ...

In October 1935, De Kooning began to work on the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project, and he won the Logan Medal of the arts while working together with Colombian Santiago Martínez Delgado. They were employed by this work-relief program until July 1937, when they resigned because of their alien status. This period of about two years provided the artist, who had been supporting himself during the early Depression by commercial jobs, with his first opportunity to devote full time to creative work. He worked on both the easel-painting and mural divisions of the project (the several murals he designed were never executed). WPA Graphic The Works Progress Administration (later Work Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created on May 6, 1935 by Presidential order (Congress funded it annually but did not set it up). ... East Side West Side Exhibition of Photographs, New York City Federal Art Project, WPA, 1938 The Federal Art Project (FAP) was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal WPA Federal One program in the United States. ... Price started by the Patron of the Arts Frank Granger Logan, founder of the brokerage house of Logan & Bryan, he served for over 50 years on the board of the Chicago Art Institute, and became its honorary president, the Art Institute honored him with a gift of 20 paintings... Santiago Martinez Delgado (Born in Bogotá in 1906 - Died in 1954 in Madrid, Cundinamarca) was a Colombian painter, sculptor, art historian and writer. ...

In 1938, probably under the influence of Gorky, De Kooning embarked on a series of male figures, including Two Men Standing, Man, and Seated Figure (Classic Male), while simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of lyrically colored abstractions, such as Pink Landscape and Elegy. As his work progressed, the heightened colors and elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period includes the representational but somewhat geometricized Woman and Standing Man, along with numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms increasingly suggest the presence of figures. By about 1945 the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in Pink Angels.

In 1938, De Kooning met Elaine Marie Fried, later known as Elaine de Kooning, whom he married in 1943. She also became a significant artist. During the 1940s and thereafter, he became increasingly identified with the Abstract Expressionist movement and was recognized as one of its leaders in the mid-1950s. He had his first one-man show, which consisted of his black-and-white enamel compositions, at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York in 1948 and taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1948 and at the Yale School of Art in 1950/51. Elaine Marie de Kooning (12 March 1918 - 1 February 1989), was an abstract expressionist and semi-realistic painter. ... The Charles Egan Gallery opened at 63 East 57th Street (Manhattan) in about 1945, when Charles Egan was in his mid-30s. ... This article is in need of attention. ...

Mature works

In 1946, too poor to buy artists' pigments, he turned to black and white household enamels to paint a series of large abstractions; of these works, Light in August (c. 1946) and Black Friday (1948) are essentially black with white elements, whereas Zurich (1947) and Mailbox (1947/48) are white with black. Developing out of these works in the period after his first show were complex, agitated abstractions such as Asheville (1948/49), Attic (1949), and Excavation (1950; Art Institute of Chicago), which reintroduced color and seem to sum up with taut decisiveness the problems of free-associative composition he had struggled with for many years. This sign at Leytonstone tube station is a typical enamel-painted metal sign An enamel paint is a paint that dries to an especially hard, usually glossy, finish. ... The Art Institute of Chicago is a fine art museum located in Chicago, Illinois. ...

De Kooning had painted women regularly in the early 1940s and again from 1947 to 1949. The biomorphic shapes of his early abstractions can be interpreted as female symbols. But it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively. In the summer of that year he began Woman I (located at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City), which went through innumerable metamorphoses before it was finished in 1952. The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949. ... This article is about the museum in New York City. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

During this period he also created other paintings of women. These works were shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1953 and caused a sensation, chiefly because they were figurative when most of his fellow Abstract Expressionists were painting abstractly and because of their blatant technique and imagery. The appearance of aggressive brushwork and the use of high-key colors combine to reveal a woman all too congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears. The toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities imaged the darkest Freudian insights. Some of these paintings also seemed to hearken back to early Mesopotamian / Akkadian works, with the large, almost "all-seeing" eyes. Sidney Janis (1896-1989) was a wealthy clothing manufacturer and art collector who opened an art gallery in New York in 1948. ... Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ...

The Woman' paintings II through VI (1952-53) are all variants on this theme, as are Woman and Bicycle (1953; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) and Two Women in the Country (1954). The deliberate vulgarity of these paintings contrasts with the French painter Jean Dubuffet's no less harsh Corps de Dame series of 1950, in which the female, formed with a rich topography of earth colours, relates more directly to universal symbols. Night view of Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art is an art gallery and museum in New York City founded in 1931 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. ... Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (July 31, 1901 - May 12, 1985) was one of the most famous French painters and sculptors of the second half of the 20th century. ...

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, De Kooning entered a new phase of nearly pure abstractions more related to landscape than to the human figure. These paintings, such as "Bolton Landing" (1957) and "Door to the River" (1960) bear broad brushstrokes and calligraphic tendencies similar to works of his contemporary Franz Kline.

In 1963, De Kooning moved permanently to East Hampton, Long Island, ^[5]and returned to depicting women while also referencing the landscape in such paintings as Woman, Sag harbor and Clam Diggers. East Hampton is the name of some places in the United States of America: East Hampton, Connecticut East Hampton, New York - Town of East Hampton East Hampton, New York - Village of East Hampton These should not be confused with places named Easthampton. ... This article is about the island in New York State. ...

Willem de Kooning was diagnosed with, in all probability, Alzheimer's disease.^[3] After his wife, Elaine, died on February 1, 1989, his daughter, Lisa, and his lawyer, John Eastman were granted guardianship over De Kooning.^[3] As the style of his later works continued to evolve into early 1989, his vintage works drew increasing profits; at Sotheby's auctions Pink Lady (1944) sold for US$3.6 million in 1987 and Interchange (1955) brought $20.6 million in 1989. PR shot of Sothebys New York, from auditions for The Apprentice 2 Sothebys is a noted auction house. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... See also: 1988 in art, other events of 1989, 1990 in art, list of years in art. ...

There is much debate over the relevance and significance of his 1980s paintings, many of which became clean, sparse, and almost graphic, while alluding to the biomorphic lines of his early works. Some have said his very last works, most of which have never been exhibited, present a new direction of compositional complexity and daring color juxtapositions, Some speculate that his mental condition and attempts to recover from a life of alcoholism had rendered him unable to carry out the mastery indicated in his early works, while others see these late works as boldly prophetic of directions that some current painters continue to pursue. Unfortunately, gossip has tainted the scant critical commentary afforded these last works, which have yet to be seriously assessed. Alcoholism is the consumption of, or preoccupation with, alcoholic beverages to the extent that this behavior interferes with the drinkers normal personal, family, social, or work life, and may lead to physical or mental harm. ...

References

1. ^ Willem de Kooning, Britannica.com, p1
2. ^ Marcia Brennan, Modernism's Masculine Subjects: Matisse, the New York School, and Post-Painterly Abstraction, MIT Press, p71. ISBN 026202571X
3. ^ ^{a b c} Barbara Hess, Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse, Taschen, 2004, p87. ISBN 3822821357
4. ^ Barbara Hess, Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse, Taschen, p15. ISBN 3822821357
5. ^ Willem de Kooning at Encyclopædia Britannica

The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopaedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. ...

Bibliography

• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
• Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-4560-6

See also

• Abstract expressionism
• Action painting
• Elaine de Kooning
• Impasto
• Women in art
• Woman III

Jackson Pollock, No. ... Pollocks Galaxy, a part of the Joslyn Art Museums permanent collection. ... Elaine Marie de Kooning (12 March 1918 - 1 February 1989), was an abstract expressionist and semi-realistic painter. ... Image:Jane Frank Crgs And Crevices. ... Professor and art historian Linda Nochlin began her wonderfully provocative 1971 Artnews article with the question Why are there no great women artists? This question was in essence a challenge to traditional art history. ... Woman III is a painting done by abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. ...

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