Willem De KOONING (1904-1997)
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Abstract art II Sculpture by painters
Chronology : 1950-1959 1950 1955 1970-1979 1972 1975 1976 1977 1979
See also : Abstract art II Sculpture by painters
Chronology : 1950-1959 1950 1955 1970-1979 1972 1975 1976 1977 1979
1947 Orestes
2023 for sale in May by Christie's
waiting for catalogue
We're in a Masterpiece market, a term coined by Tobias Meyer a decade ago, and now @ChristiesInc is going to test that with works from S.I. Newhouse, Jr.'s collection. $144 million worth of art including Willem de Kooning's Orestes estimated at $25m. pic.twitter.com/5hVDW2nhkW
— LiveArt (@artmarket) February 21, 2023
1950 Collage
2022 SOLD for $ 33.6M by Sotheby's
The Cubist artists desired to emulate an illusion of depth on a flat surface. For that purpose, they deconstructed the surface and used collages. A Dutchman living in New York, Willem de Kooning is inspired by these European trends and techniques.
De Kooning met Pollock in 1942. Both artists were considering that the construction of an artwork influenced the visual effect. While Pollock manages to progressively hide preliminary drawings behind his drippings, de Kooning sometimes considered as finished works the collages that he was using to conceive the visual effects of his paintings.
A work simply titled Collage executed in 1950 by de Kooning is made of overlapping collages in bright oil and lacquer paints with some silver thumbtacks on paper 56 x 72 cm.
The artist remains obsessed with the representation of the female form, which the viewer will search within this mingled picture. The same game applied more easily on Abstraction, an oil, enamel and charcoal on card 62 x 83 cm painted ca 1949, sold for $ 19.7M by Sotheby's on November 13, 2012, lot 13. These experimental works are direct predecessors to the Woman I, completed in 1952.
After 70 years in the David W. Solinger collection, Collage was sold for $ 33.6M from a lower estimate of $ 18M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 10. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
De Kooning met Pollock in 1942. Both artists were considering that the construction of an artwork influenced the visual effect. While Pollock manages to progressively hide preliminary drawings behind his drippings, de Kooning sometimes considered as finished works the collages that he was using to conceive the visual effects of his paintings.
A work simply titled Collage executed in 1950 by de Kooning is made of overlapping collages in bright oil and lacquer paints with some silver thumbtacks on paper 56 x 72 cm.
The artist remains obsessed with the representation of the female form, which the viewer will search within this mingled picture. The same game applied more easily on Abstraction, an oil, enamel and charcoal on card 62 x 83 cm painted ca 1949, sold for $ 19.7M by Sotheby's on November 13, 2012, lot 13. These experimental works are direct predecessors to the Woman I, completed in 1952.
After 70 years in the David W. Solinger collection, Collage was sold for $ 33.6M from a lower estimate of $ 18M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 10. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
masterpiece
1952 Woman
MoMA
De Kooning is an abstract painter, influenced by Arshile Gorky. In his return to woman and flesh, he conceives the opposite of the cubist deconstruction : the forms appear by offsetting the abstraction with very violent brushstrokes.
The woman was a major theme of De Kooning from the early time when he was experiencing with Arshile Gorky for the border between figurative and abstract. His third series of Women, from 1950 to 1955, is the most innovative, marked by alternating enthusiasms and discouragements of the artist.
De Kooning is in quest of the eternal woman who inspired artists since the age of the stone idols. More than her femininity, he expresses her fertility in a standing attitude characterized by opulent breasts. The head is only a useless excrescence in this slightly down-up vision. His drawing is reminiscent of the synthetic cubism.
The result is at the opposite of the aesthetics of his time despite an expressionist use of color. An art critic said in 1953 that De Kooning "had gone too far, but that is the only place to go".
The inspiration goes on a same path for the idols of ancient times and for the modern naive artists : the series of Corps de Dames by Dubuffet, the prophet of Art Brut, is also starting in 1950 and offers a similar vision of morphology.
Completed in 1952, Woman I arouses scandal, without even offering the disturbing humor of the Corps de Dames by Dubuffet. The new idol is standing with her ugly body, horribly close to reality, in full contrast to post-war pin-ups.
The negative reactions confirm a contrario the emotional impact of the work. De Kooning continues the series up to Woman VI, as well as many trials carried out in parallel.
The woman was a major theme of De Kooning from the early time when he was experiencing with Arshile Gorky for the border between figurative and abstract. His third series of Women, from 1950 to 1955, is the most innovative, marked by alternating enthusiasms and discouragements of the artist.
De Kooning is in quest of the eternal woman who inspired artists since the age of the stone idols. More than her femininity, he expresses her fertility in a standing attitude characterized by opulent breasts. The head is only a useless excrescence in this slightly down-up vision. His drawing is reminiscent of the synthetic cubism.
The result is at the opposite of the aesthetics of his time despite an expressionist use of color. An art critic said in 1953 that De Kooning "had gone too far, but that is the only place to go".
The inspiration goes on a same path for the idols of ancient times and for the modern naive artists : the series of Corps de Dames by Dubuffet, the prophet of Art Brut, is also starting in 1950 and offers a similar vision of morphology.
Completed in 1952, Woman I arouses scandal, without even offering the disturbing humor of the Corps de Dames by Dubuffet. The new idol is standing with her ugly body, horribly close to reality, in full contrast to post-war pin-ups.
The negative reactions confirm a contrario the emotional impact of the work. De Kooning continues the series up to Woman VI, as well as many trials carried out in parallel.
1955 Woman as Landscape
2018 SOLD for $ 69M by Christie's
Close to the avant-gardes in New York, Willem de Kooning nevertheless does not want his art to be assimilated with any school. He understood, as Miro before him, that it is to the viewer to identify the subject of the work, and the ambiguity in the interpretation generates emotion.
For him, woman is an obsessive and ambiguous theme. In 1950 he begins painting a larger-than-life woman on a canvas 197 x 147 cm. He reworks it for months with his brushes and his knives and considers it as finished in June 1952 thanks to the intervention of a friend.
His characters are figurative but excessively misshapen and grotesque. Color prevails over form. He said : "Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented".
In late 1952 and in 1953 he makes new versions of his woman. This ideal woman is a synthesis between the opulent Paleolithic statuettes of fertility and a grotesque vixen of modern time. The spectators see in that 'Woman' series the expression at best of an annoyance, at worst of an aggressive sexual impulse, in a feverish brush work. Woman III was sold for $ 137.5M in 2006 in a private sale.
This task resulted in the side-by-side exhibition of six paintings titled Woman I to Woman VI. They are standing in similar frontal positions. The bright and varied colors of the clothes could simulate according to the artist the evolution of the fashions. De Kooning demonstrates here that Action painting was not incompatible with a figurative theme.
I to VI are not the only artworks on this theme. This series did not include a Woman with Bicycle painted in 1952 in the same style but in a slightly different attitude. Oils on paper are made in smaller sizes.
De Kooning carries out new experiments in 1955. The drift of abstraction also generates the landscape, which can be entangled with the body of the woman.
Woman as Landscape, started in 1954, begins a new phase in de Kooning's desire to break down the boundaries between figurative themes. This 166 x 125 cm oil and charcoal on canvas completed in 1955 was sold for $ 69M by Christie's on November 13, 2018, lot 7 B.
The colors of a landscape with its blue sky and green ground surround the woman. The title is significant with 'as landscape' and not 'in landscape' to indicate that the artist is ready to mix the genres.
In the same year with Interchange, a bird's eye landscape remains perceptible, centered on a river. When the viewer realizes that the river has the shape of a female body, this painting considered as one of the very first examples of abstract landscape becomes a masterpiece of hidden erotic art, alongside Picasso's Le Rêve. Police Gazette is an abstract landscape in a vertical perspective.
Interchange, oil on canvas 200 x 175 cm, was sold for $ 20.7M by Sotheby's on November 8, 1989, the highest auction result at that time for a work by a living artist. A private transaction for $ 500M between two billionaires was announced in February 2016. It involved only two paintings. The piece of choice, whose contribution was announced at $ 300M in the press releases, was Interchange. The other item, thus worth $ 200M, was a 1948 dripping by Pollock numbered 17A.
At the end of the year he returns to abstract compositions in which his figurative intentions, when they exist, are intertwined and can only be deciphered by him.
For him, woman is an obsessive and ambiguous theme. In 1950 he begins painting a larger-than-life woman on a canvas 197 x 147 cm. He reworks it for months with his brushes and his knives and considers it as finished in June 1952 thanks to the intervention of a friend.
His characters are figurative but excessively misshapen and grotesque. Color prevails over form. He said : "Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented".
In late 1952 and in 1953 he makes new versions of his woman. This ideal woman is a synthesis between the opulent Paleolithic statuettes of fertility and a grotesque vixen of modern time. The spectators see in that 'Woman' series the expression at best of an annoyance, at worst of an aggressive sexual impulse, in a feverish brush work. Woman III was sold for $ 137.5M in 2006 in a private sale.
This task resulted in the side-by-side exhibition of six paintings titled Woman I to Woman VI. They are standing in similar frontal positions. The bright and varied colors of the clothes could simulate according to the artist the evolution of the fashions. De Kooning demonstrates here that Action painting was not incompatible with a figurative theme.
I to VI are not the only artworks on this theme. This series did not include a Woman with Bicycle painted in 1952 in the same style but in a slightly different attitude. Oils on paper are made in smaller sizes.
De Kooning carries out new experiments in 1955. The drift of abstraction also generates the landscape, which can be entangled with the body of the woman.
Woman as Landscape, started in 1954, begins a new phase in de Kooning's desire to break down the boundaries between figurative themes. This 166 x 125 cm oil and charcoal on canvas completed in 1955 was sold for $ 69M by Christie's on November 13, 2018, lot 7 B.
The colors of a landscape with its blue sky and green ground surround the woman. The title is significant with 'as landscape' and not 'in landscape' to indicate that the artist is ready to mix the genres.
In the same year with Interchange, a bird's eye landscape remains perceptible, centered on a river. When the viewer realizes that the river has the shape of a female body, this painting considered as one of the very first examples of abstract landscape becomes a masterpiece of hidden erotic art, alongside Picasso's Le Rêve. Police Gazette is an abstract landscape in a vertical perspective.
Interchange, oil on canvas 200 x 175 cm, was sold for $ 20.7M by Sotheby's on November 8, 1989, the highest auction result at that time for a work by a living artist. A private transaction for $ 500M between two billionaires was announced in February 2016. It involved only two paintings. The piece of choice, whose contribution was announced at $ 300M in the press releases, was Interchange. The other item, thus worth $ 200M, was a 1948 dripping by Pollock numbered 17A.
At the end of the year he returns to abstract compositions in which his figurative intentions, when they exist, are intertwined and can only be deciphered by him.
1972 Clamdigger
2014 SOLD for $ 29.3M by Christie's
Willem de Kooning was first of all a painter, of course. Refusing allegiance to any school and any tendency, his works suppressed the border between abstract and biomorphic, generating in the viewer some disorder that was sometimes difficult to characterize.
In 1969, during a stay in Italy, he went to be a sculptor. His style is figurative without being realistic, in the follow of Boccioni. The limbs are extended or shortened. The kneading of the clay is hectic, after Giacometti. Both liked the capability of the clay to be broken and reworked up to the final satisfaction, which is not the case in painting.
Again like Giacometti, de Kooning's world is dominated by the figures of a man and a woman. Giacometti had the Homme qui marche and the Femme debout. De Kooning had the Clamdigger and the Seated Woman. De Kooning's expression of the relation between body and movement was lauded by Henry Moore.
The Clamdigger is searching in sand to extract the shells. His gesture gathers the symbols of creation : sea water, clay, primitive animal, man. It has even been suggested that the Clamdigger by de Kooning is a self-portrait. The texture mimics the lapping waves.
This sculpture was enlarged in bronze in 1972 in seven copies plus three artist's proofs 1.51 m high. On November 12, 2014, Christie's sold for $ 29.3M the artist's proof that de Kooning had installed at the entrance to his studio, lot 21. The statue had remained up to that sale with his descendants.
In 1969, during a stay in Italy, he went to be a sculptor. His style is figurative without being realistic, in the follow of Boccioni. The limbs are extended or shortened. The kneading of the clay is hectic, after Giacometti. Both liked the capability of the clay to be broken and reworked up to the final satisfaction, which is not the case in painting.
Again like Giacometti, de Kooning's world is dominated by the figures of a man and a woman. Giacometti had the Homme qui marche and the Femme debout. De Kooning had the Clamdigger and the Seated Woman. De Kooning's expression of the relation between body and movement was lauded by Henry Moore.
The Clamdigger is searching in sand to extract the shells. His gesture gathers the symbols of creation : sea water, clay, primitive animal, man. It has even been suggested that the Clamdigger by de Kooning is a self-portrait. The texture mimics the lapping waves.
This sculpture was enlarged in bronze in 1972 in seven copies plus three artist's proofs 1.51 m high. On November 12, 2014, Christie's sold for $ 29.3M the artist's proof that de Kooning had installed at the entrance to his studio, lot 21. The statue had remained up to that sale with his descendants.
1975 Untitled V
2013 SOLD for $ 25M by Sotheby's
Rothko had died in 1970 and Pollock for much longer. The expression of emotions through the distribution of colors could appear to be an art from the past. Willem de Kooning had stopped painting to try sculpture. In 1975, aged 71, this pioneer of modern art operates a dramatic turnaround that restarts the abstract art.
From 1975 Willem de Kooning finds an unexpected happiness that gradually generates a great impulse of creativity. He lives in Long Island amidst a lush nature, next to his mistress Mimi Kilgore. Elaine, from he never divorced, will soon be back to help.
His colors are bright, pure, explosive and even enthusiastic. Forms are only used for ensuring the dynamic balance. Biomorphic evocations if any are no longer decipherable. The color has its own language without being locked in Rothko's structured rectangles.
The colors come to play over an almost translucent lead white ground prepared in several phases of sanding that emulates the clarity of the coastal light. The hand is fast but the balance of the blocks and the uneven brightness provided by the variation in the thickness of paint meet a predefined composition.
De Kooning liked closing his eyes for sculpting clay so that only the gesture and the touch defined the form. Similarly in his new series of paintings the drips and flecks are not created by the sight but by the hand. He once defined his practice of painting as a bending (of forms and colors) just like Miles Davis was bending and not playing the notes for creating rhythm and syncopation.
The most important paintings of this period are named Untitled, with the indication of the year and a serialization in Roman numerals. The numbering of an opus in the sequence, restarting with a nuw I in 1977 and 1980, is not significant.
On November 13, 2013, Sotheby 's sold at lot 30 for $ 25M Untitled V, 178 x 203 cm, one of the first works of this revival of 1975. This is one of the largest in the series and one of the most attractive in its successful balance between colors and whites.
The Untitled VI of 1975 was sold for $ 12.4M by Phillips de Pury on May 10, 2012, lot 19.
This oil on canvas has the same 203 x 178 cm size as the Untitled V but in a vertical format. The comparison may stop here as the abstract composition of these two works is very different. The artist used to prepare his Untitled in series alongside each other. When one work is finished, the others remain other step in the expression of his world.
The V is an explosion of colors that manage to occupy the major part of the canvas. The VI is made of elongated forms with distorted shapes and outlines that float within a plain space. Such a composition anticipates the confrontations of simpler floating lines of the 1980s.
They are not landscapes. The gravity is canceled by the artist by rotating the easel during the creation of the work.
The feat of this aging artist was to open a new path while continuing to profess that a genuine art should not be attributed to a school or a style. The violent scraps and smears of the brush and knife of de Kooning's Untitled from the late 1970s anticipate the squeegee technique of Richter.
From 1975 Willem de Kooning finds an unexpected happiness that gradually generates a great impulse of creativity. He lives in Long Island amidst a lush nature, next to his mistress Mimi Kilgore. Elaine, from he never divorced, will soon be back to help.
His colors are bright, pure, explosive and even enthusiastic. Forms are only used for ensuring the dynamic balance. Biomorphic evocations if any are no longer decipherable. The color has its own language without being locked in Rothko's structured rectangles.
The colors come to play over an almost translucent lead white ground prepared in several phases of sanding that emulates the clarity of the coastal light. The hand is fast but the balance of the blocks and the uneven brightness provided by the variation in the thickness of paint meet a predefined composition.
De Kooning liked closing his eyes for sculpting clay so that only the gesture and the touch defined the form. Similarly in his new series of paintings the drips and flecks are not created by the sight but by the hand. He once defined his practice of painting as a bending (of forms and colors) just like Miles Davis was bending and not playing the notes for creating rhythm and syncopation.
The most important paintings of this period are named Untitled, with the indication of the year and a serialization in Roman numerals. The numbering of an opus in the sequence, restarting with a nuw I in 1977 and 1980, is not significant.
On November 13, 2013, Sotheby 's sold at lot 30 for $ 25M Untitled V, 178 x 203 cm, one of the first works of this revival of 1975. This is one of the largest in the series and one of the most attractive in its successful balance between colors and whites.
The Untitled VI of 1975 was sold for $ 12.4M by Phillips de Pury on May 10, 2012, lot 19.
This oil on canvas has the same 203 x 178 cm size as the Untitled V but in a vertical format. The comparison may stop here as the abstract composition of these two works is very different. The artist used to prepare his Untitled in series alongside each other. When one work is finished, the others remain other step in the expression of his world.
The V is an explosion of colors that manage to occupy the major part of the canvas. The VI is made of elongated forms with distorted shapes and outlines that float within a plain space. Such a composition anticipates the confrontations of simpler floating lines of the 1980s.
They are not landscapes. The gravity is canceled by the artist by rotating the easel during the creation of the work.
The feat of this aging artist was to open a new path while continuing to profess that a genuine art should not be attributed to a school or a style. The violent scraps and smears of the brush and knife of de Kooning's Untitled from the late 1970s anticipate the squeegee technique of Richter.
1976 Untitled XXI
2015 SOLD for $ 25M by Sotheby's
East Hampton is the closest land's end to New York City, facing from the eastern side of Long Island the vastness and violence of the ocean. The big city is not conducive to the communion of an artist with nature. Adroitly pushed by Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock established their workshop in a barn near the village.
The countryside is flat like in Holland, but the nature explodes in rich colors. Around Leo and Ileana Castelli who also settled in East Hampton, the artists of abstract expressionism and of action painting come to imbibe themselves within the purity of that place.
Willem de Kooning visits the Castelli in East Hampton in 1951 and moves his studio and home in the village in the early 1960s. His early intention of making abstract landscapes is ephemeral. Returning to the representation of human nature, he devotes his art primarily to sculpture in 1969.
The series of Untitled paintings of 1975-1977 is a turning point in De Kooning's art. The artist was happy and intensely enjoying the nature. The shining colors that he dispositioned on the whole surface of his large paintings express such deep feelings. His painting is a landscape without drawing.
On November 4, 2015, Sotheby's sold for $ 25M the Untitled XXI of 1976, oil on canvas 203 x 178 cm, lot 15T. The artist added thinning oils to the paint for displaying sculptural effects on the canvas. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The passion of action painting liberates to the viewer's imagination the waves breaking on the rocks, the color of gorse in blossom on the dune and a woman standing in a long dress who observes all this beauty. Alfred Taubman enjoyed this specific opus.
Some smaller paintings of similar technique are titled East Hampton, revealing the inspiration of the whole. East Hampton VI, oil on canvas 77 x 91 cm painted in 1977, was sold for $ 10.4M by Christie's on May 13, 2021, lot 3 B.
The countryside is flat like in Holland, but the nature explodes in rich colors. Around Leo and Ileana Castelli who also settled in East Hampton, the artists of abstract expressionism and of action painting come to imbibe themselves within the purity of that place.
Willem de Kooning visits the Castelli in East Hampton in 1951 and moves his studio and home in the village in the early 1960s. His early intention of making abstract landscapes is ephemeral. Returning to the representation of human nature, he devotes his art primarily to sculpture in 1969.
The series of Untitled paintings of 1975-1977 is a turning point in De Kooning's art. The artist was happy and intensely enjoying the nature. The shining colors that he dispositioned on the whole surface of his large paintings express such deep feelings. His painting is a landscape without drawing.
On November 4, 2015, Sotheby's sold for $ 25M the Untitled XXI of 1976, oil on canvas 203 x 178 cm, lot 15T. The artist added thinning oils to the paint for displaying sculptural effects on the canvas. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The passion of action painting liberates to the viewer's imagination the waves breaking on the rocks, the color of gorse in blossom on the dune and a woman standing in a long dress who observes all this beauty. Alfred Taubman enjoyed this specific opus.
Some smaller paintings of similar technique are titled East Hampton, revealing the inspiration of the whole. East Hampton VI, oil on canvas 77 x 91 cm painted in 1977, was sold for $ 10.4M by Christie's on May 13, 2021, lot 3 B.
1977 Untitled
1
XXV
2016 SOLD for $ 66M by Christie's
Willem de Kooning was a lover of women and a heavy drinker. His artistic career is uneven, marked by breaks and restarts. The beauty of Long Island offers him a late redemption in his seventies.
De Kooning buys a piece of land near Springs in 1958, two years after Pollock's death. Pollock had his studio in the same village where he was imbued with the richly colorful nature facing the fluctuating surface of the ocean. It took 17 years to de Kooning to start a creativity of similar inspiration.
In 1975 the old artist is happy. His art is acclaimed. He is pleased with his young girlfriend Mimi Kilgore. His wife Elaine of whom he had never divorced comes back to him in the following year. He finally takes time to contemplate the nature through observations of very long duration ending in a sudden rush on his canvas, colors and brushes.
The bright colors that cover the entire surface of the canvas were not spontaneous at all. They are made of mixed layers varying from impasto to flowing paint. The visionary artist knows in advance which result he desires and has no doubt that he will succeed. Once finished he considers that what he achieved is impossible to repeat. And he starts again with another canvas.
All these Untitled paintings are different because they are based on other contemplations. Sometimes a naked flesh, a tree or the sea arises beyond abstraction by a careful observation. Pollock also was upset when his art was considered abstract.
Untitled XXV, oil on canvas also 196 x 224 cm painted in 1977, was sold by Christie's for $ 27M on 15 November 15, 2006, and for $ 66M exactly ten years later, on November 15, 2016, lot 8 A. The abstract scenery was made in a rich dominance of scarlet, crimson and vermilion that cancels the radiant white background layer.
De Kooning buys a piece of land near Springs in 1958, two years after Pollock's death. Pollock had his studio in the same village where he was imbued with the richly colorful nature facing the fluctuating surface of the ocean. It took 17 years to de Kooning to start a creativity of similar inspiration.
In 1975 the old artist is happy. His art is acclaimed. He is pleased with his young girlfriend Mimi Kilgore. His wife Elaine of whom he had never divorced comes back to him in the following year. He finally takes time to contemplate the nature through observations of very long duration ending in a sudden rush on his canvas, colors and brushes.
The bright colors that cover the entire surface of the canvas were not spontaneous at all. They are made of mixed layers varying from impasto to flowing paint. The visionary artist knows in advance which result he desires and has no doubt that he will succeed. Once finished he considers that what he achieved is impossible to repeat. And he starts again with another canvas.
All these Untitled paintings are different because they are based on other contemplations. Sometimes a naked flesh, a tree or the sea arises beyond abstraction by a careful observation. Pollock also was upset when his art was considered abstract.
Untitled XXV, oil on canvas also 196 x 224 cm painted in 1977, was sold by Christie's for $ 27M on 15 November 15, 2006, and for $ 66M exactly ten years later, on November 15, 2016, lot 8 A. The abstract scenery was made in a rich dominance of scarlet, crimson and vermilion that cancels the radiant white background layer.
2
VIII
2013 SOLD for $ 32M by Christie's
De Kooning reuses in his 1977 Untitled series his previous style of partitioned composition covering all the available surface, as boundless as a Pollock painting. The observer continuously discovers new details by varying the reading trip.
The Untitled II of 1977, 196 x 224 cm, expresses the colors and balances of nature while bringing an additional theme : the body of a woman who is peacefully reclining in the foreground offers a rare reminder from the Woman series which had brought to the artist his unfairly sulphurous notoriety a quarter of a century earlier.
The Untitled VIII from 1977, oil on canvas 178 x 203 cm, was sold for $ 32M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Christie's on November 12, 2013, lot 37. In this scenery the bright blues of sky and sea are confronting the vibrant flashes of red, yellow and orange of the ground.
This painting is a rare synthesis of all the research by De Kooning at the border between biomorphic and abstraction. In the foreground on the right, the structure in the form of inverted S is a woman sitting in nature. This discovery makes in turn perceive another woman and then the perspective of a landscape.
Through the doubts and changes in his career, De Kooning, away from any school, had never given up his goal to express altogether the body, the soul and the landscape. At over 70 years old, he had also become the most skilled colorist of his time.
The Untitled II of 1977, 196 x 224 cm, expresses the colors and balances of nature while bringing an additional theme : the body of a woman who is peacefully reclining in the foreground offers a rare reminder from the Woman series which had brought to the artist his unfairly sulphurous notoriety a quarter of a century earlier.
The Untitled VIII from 1977, oil on canvas 178 x 203 cm, was sold for $ 32M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Christie's on November 12, 2013, lot 37. In this scenery the bright blues of sky and sea are confronting the vibrant flashes of red, yellow and orange of the ground.
This painting is a rare synthesis of all the research by De Kooning at the border between biomorphic and abstraction. In the foreground on the right, the structure in the form of inverted S is a woman sitting in nature. This discovery makes in turn perceive another woman and then the perspective of a landscape.
Through the doubts and changes in his career, De Kooning, away from any school, had never given up his goal to express altogether the body, the soul and the landscape. At over 70 years old, he had also become the most skilled colorist of his time.
3
XXI
2022 SOLD for $ 25M by Christie's
The large size Untitled paintings of 1977 are different from one another. While de Kooning did not reveal his inspiration, they are a collection of his color impressions in and near his East Hampton home.
The Untitled XXI is joyously structured by lines and zigzags in various bright colors. The fields are dominated by the flesh like salmon pink, the fetish color of the artist, that invites the viewer to certainly wrong interpretations.
Three roughly squared light vermilion figures in the upper half may be a door and two windows separating outdoors and indoors, but the viewer cannot conclude on which side he is in this abstract scenery. The figure at the lower left may be a foreground reconstituting a dressed woman with a bun of dark hair. An impression of bright daybreak light has also been proposed.
XXI, oil on canvas 178 x 203 cm, is was sold for $ 25M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 19C.
The Untitled XXI is joyously structured by lines and zigzags in various bright colors. The fields are dominated by the flesh like salmon pink, the fetish color of the artist, that invites the viewer to certainly wrong interpretations.
Three roughly squared light vermilion figures in the upper half may be a door and two windows separating outdoors and indoors, but the viewer cannot conclude on which side he is in this abstract scenery. The figure at the lower left may be a foreground reconstituting a dressed woman with a bun of dark hair. An impression of bright daybreak light has also been proposed.
XXI, oil on canvas 178 x 203 cm, is was sold for $ 25M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 19C.
4
XXII
2019 SOLD for $ 30M by Sotheby's
As 1977 goes forward, de Kooning's paintings gradually lose their last references to human beings and even to landscape. Before deciding whether a painting suits him, he looks at it from every angle, including by overturning it.
On November 14, 2019, Sotheby's sold for $ 30M the Untitled XXII of 1977, lot 13. This oil on canvas 178 x 203 cm expresses with high energy the forces of nature by the violence of the brush strokes. The usual floating forms unite here in a sort of irregular grid over the luminous background which may here evoke the grey light on a tumultuous ocean.
The Untitled XXXI of 1977, oil on canvas 137 x 152 cm, was sold for $ 21M by Christie's on May 13, 2014, lot 39.
The Untitled XXXIII of 1977, oil on canvas 152 x 137 cm, was sold for $ 24.4M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 3. This fully abstract opus displays on its whole surface a rhythmic collision of peach, pink and crimson with no outline, in a surrounding of white, red, green, blue and yellow that altogether express the atmosphere and light that the artist so much loved in East Hampton.
On November 14, 2019, Sotheby's sold for $ 30M the Untitled XXII of 1977, lot 13. This oil on canvas 178 x 203 cm expresses with high energy the forces of nature by the violence of the brush strokes. The usual floating forms unite here in a sort of irregular grid over the luminous background which may here evoke the grey light on a tumultuous ocean.
The Untitled XXXI of 1977, oil on canvas 137 x 152 cm, was sold for $ 21M by Christie's on May 13, 2014, lot 39.
The Untitled XXXIII of 1977, oil on canvas 152 x 137 cm, was sold for $ 24.4M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 3. This fully abstract opus displays on its whole surface a rhythmic collision of peach, pink and crimson with no outline, in a surrounding of white, red, green, blue and yellow that altogether express the atmosphere and light that the artist so much loved in East Hampton.
1979 the Monet
2022 SOLD for $ 35M by Sotheby's
In 1977 Willem de Kooning was busy to interpret in abstraction the scintillating colors of landscape, sea and sky around his home at East Hampton.
That creative activity was followed with a reduced output after he fell once again in 1978 in alcoholism and anxiety. The rarity of de Kooning's art in 1979 and 1980 attests of the sustained psychological difficulty of the artist then in his mid 70s. They have been made still scarcer by his practice to scrap his own work when it did not match his expectancies.
From their beginnings in the 1940s, de Kooning and Gorky used to deny the influence of previous art and their belonging to a trend or to school. They indeed expressed their own feelings.
An oil on canvas 178 x 200 cm painted ca 1979 is a turning point in de Kooning's creativity. He managed to transfer to abstraction the colors of water mirroring the sky in Monet's Nymphéas. Its balance of brilliant saturated dominant blue with yellow and their combined green. The technique is a mix of impasto applied and removed with the knife and of thinned paint in combinations of solvents, reflecting the rapid gesture and the energy of the arm.
This Untitled was dubbed 'the Monet' and treasured by his daughter and grandchildren. They said : It was a window, we had the sea in the studio. Directly from that provenance, it was sold for $ 35M by Sotheby's on November 16, 2022, lot 108. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
That creative activity was followed with a reduced output after he fell once again in 1978 in alcoholism and anxiety. The rarity of de Kooning's art in 1979 and 1980 attests of the sustained psychological difficulty of the artist then in his mid 70s. They have been made still scarcer by his practice to scrap his own work when it did not match his expectancies.
From their beginnings in the 1940s, de Kooning and Gorky used to deny the influence of previous art and their belonging to a trend or to school. They indeed expressed their own feelings.
An oil on canvas 178 x 200 cm painted ca 1979 is a turning point in de Kooning's creativity. He managed to transfer to abstraction the colors of water mirroring the sky in Monet's Nymphéas. Its balance of brilliant saturated dominant blue with yellow and their combined green. The technique is a mix of impasto applied and removed with the knife and of thinned paint in combinations of solvents, reflecting the rapid gesture and the energy of the arm.
This Untitled was dubbed 'the Monet' and treasured by his daughter and grandchildren. They said : It was a window, we had the sea in the studio. Directly from that provenance, it was sold for $ 35M by Sotheby's on November 16, 2022, lot 108. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
