WILLEM DE KOONING - LATE PAINTINGS

WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997)

Dutch-American painter Willem de Kooning was a first generation Abstract Expressionist. Starting as an \\\"angry young man\\\" in the 1930s, he is best known for his Women series—a subject he pursued from the beginning to the end of his career. In the 1970s he began to make sculptures.

At a ripe old age, de Kooning’s furor made way for a quiet, almost conceptual art of painting that is nevertheless full of suspense. Heading in a new direction, his works became more drawing-like, with a preference for primary colors, eventually including pastel colors to the palette. Bridging the gap to Minimalism, he never abandoned gestural forms.

This volume is the first to focus on Willem de Kooning’s late paintings, with essays by Julie Sylvester and David Sylvester. It accompanies a travelling exhibition starting at the Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg in summer 2006 and presenting 24 works, most of which have never been seen before.

About the Author
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), born in Rotterdam, studied art in the Netherlands and Belgium. Moving to the USA in 1926, he worked for the WPA Federal Art Project and in 1938 started his lifetime series of Women paintings. Honored by a major MoMA retrospective, he died on Long Island in 1997. Julie Sylvester is Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at theState Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

David Sylvester (1926–2001) was a prominent writer on contemporary art, the curator of major exhibitions, and an art collector himself. He published the René Magritte catalogue raisonné and wrote seminal essays on Bacon, Moore, and de Kooning.