b. Netherlands 1961

d. New York, USA 1997

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. In the 1950s, de Kooning maintained a commitment to the figurative tradition while painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline were moving away from representational imagery toward pure abstraction, developing a signature style and controversial body of works that has become his “Women” paintings. The artist, following this series, pursued non- objective lyrical abstraction until his death in 1977.

De Kooning was awarded many honors in his lifetime, including The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. His works have been included in thousands of exhibitions and are in the permanent collections of many of the finest art institutions abroad, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and in America such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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