Life

1. born Willem de Kooning in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Willem de Kooning dropped out of school when he was only 12 years old and began working as an apprentice in a design and decoration company.

2. de Kooning immigrated illegally to the United States in 1926 as a stowaway on a ship.

3. he began working for the WPA Federal Art Project in 1935, but left after less than two years for lack of citizenship and fear of being discovered.

Early Painting Career

4. de Kooning began his career at the height of Pablo Picasso's fame, but like many of his contemporaries, he was troubled early in his career by competition from the Parisian avant-garde art scene, commenting that Picasso was the man to beat.

5. art critics Harold Rosenberg andClement Greenberg were fans of de Kooning's work, and their appreciation and commentary on his work was a major step forward in his career.

ELAINE AND BILL DE KOONING, 1953. photograph courtesy of bridgeman images

Marriage and Growing Reputation

6. de Kooning's future wife, Elaine Fried, attended his drawing classes in 1938 and they married in 1943. This passionate marriage also fell victim to professional ambition, poverty, alcoholism, and infidelity. However, in their later years, they reunited and set up a studio on Long Island.


7. in the early 1950s, at the urging of an acquaintance, he began consuming alcohol to control his anxiety and heart palpitations, sometimes binge drinking.


8. received the Logan Medal and Purchase Award from the Art Institute of Chicago for his work Excavation (1950), and the museum purchased the work, making it his first museum purchase.

Excavation, 1950.


9. de Kooning's work shows constant stylistic experimentation, and in 1953 he produced a figurative work called "Woman" painting, which was in sharp contrast to his Abstract Expressionist and earlier work. Although this no longer received Greenberg's support, nevertheless, "Woman I" (1950-1952) was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York just six months after its initial exhibition.

10. his constantly evolving artistic practice baffled some critics and led them to say the famous motto, "You have to change to stay the same.

AMITYVILLE, 1971

de Kooning's style

11. often associated with abstract expressionism, de Kooning generally refused to be associated with any particular movement. While some critics, including Greenberg, consider his work to be retrogressive because of his embrace of figurative expression, de Kooning declared that "the body is the reason oil paint was invented." 12.

12. he was known for his frequent reworking of his canvases, taking a considerable amount of time to paint a single piece, eventually scraping off all the paint, re-priming the canvas, and starting again.

13. in the summer of 1948, he was personally invited by the painter Josef Albers to teach at the famous Black Mountain College.

14. de Kooning gave a lecture entitled "Abstract Art for Me" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1951.

15. in 1953, Robert Rauschenberg, then still a young man, asked de Kooning to "erase" his drawings. De Kooning received it, and Rauschenberg painstakingly erased it, carefully matted and framed it with his friend Jasper Johns, and labeled it "Erased de Kooning Drawing.

UNTITLED XXI, 1976.

LATE YEARS

16. in 1963, he moved from new york to east hampton, long island, where he designed and built his own studio and home. he would live here permanently beginning in 1971. It was here that he met and befriended many famous people, including Beatles member Paul McCartney.

17. he experimented often with the viscosity of his paints, sometimes adding water or safflower oil to make them "slippery" and easier to apply.

18. de Kooning's first retrospective exhibition was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1953, and only five years later he received an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art for a major retrospective, which he reportedly turned down.

19. de Kooning became an American citizen in 1962; two years later, in 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

20. in 1968, the first international retrospective of his work was held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. he attended the opening on his first trip home since leaving his native country in 1926.

21. In 1989, his dementia became so severe that he had to give power of attorney to his daughter, Lisa de Kooning.
Some critics have questioned whether his work after this point was "compromised" by his mental condition, while others argue that Abstract Expressionism is more intuitive than intellectual.