Dutch American painter, one
of the leaders of abstract expressionism, a movement in painting that
emphasized the spontaneous gestures of the artist. Born in Rotterdam,
Netherlands, de Kooning left school at the age of 12 and was apprenticed
to a firm of commercial artists and decorators. From 1916 to 1924 he received
a formal art education at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques.
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 de Kooning
painted murals for the Federal Arts Project of the Work Projects Administration.
His first solo exhibition was in 1948 in New York City and consisted 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 brush strokes. Two of the outstanding canvases
of this period are Asheville (1948, The Phillips Collection, Washington,
D.C.) and Excavation (1950, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois).
In 1953 de Kooning exhibited six paintings entitled Woman, demonic figures
painted in harsh colors with thick paint. The series was innovative in
joining figurative painting and abstract art. In the late 1950s de Kooning
continued to paint both figures (primarily women) and abstractions, both
of which feature careening lines, twisting forms, and a seemingly uncontrollable
energy. In the early 1960s his abstractions opened up with long, wide
swaths of color that evoke landscape forms. His works of the 1970s are
again densely active, with forms that dip in and out of sight behind splashes
of paint. These grew into simpler and more lyrical works in the 1980s,
which featured loops and twisting lines of orange, blue, or red on bare
white surfaces. |