The woman was a major theme of De Kooning from the early time when he was looking along 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.
On May 15, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 19M including premium a woman with blue eyes, oil, enamel and charcoal on paper 71 x 51 cm laid down on canvas executed by De Kooning in 1953.
The artwork for sale by Christie's in New York on November 9 is a nude 56 x 48 cm made in the same year or possibly the previous one in a similar technique. It is estimated $ 14M, lot 15A.
unsold
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.
On May 15, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 19M including premium a woman with blue eyes, oil, enamel and charcoal on paper 71 x 51 cm laid down on canvas executed by De Kooning in 1953.
The artwork for sale by Christie's in New York on November 9 is a nude 56 x 48 cm made in the same year or possibly the previous one in a similar technique. It is estimated $ 14M, lot 15A.
unsold
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