Willem de Kooning: Late Paintings
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists
Willem de Kooning: Late Paintings Details
From the Inside Flap Dutch-American painter Willem de Kooning was a first generation Abstract Expressionist. Starting as an “angry young man” in the 1930s, he is best known for his Women series—a subject he pursued from the beginning to the end of his career. In the 1970s he began to make sculptures. At a ripe old age, de Kooning’s furor made way for a quiet, almost conceptual art of painting that is nevertheless full of suspense. Heading in a new direction, his works became more drawing-like, with a preference for primary colors, eventually including pastel colors to the palette. Bridging the gap to Minimalism, he never abandoned gestural forms. This volume is the first to focus on Willem de Kooning’s late paintings, with essays by Julie Sylvester and David Sylvester. It accompanies a travelling exhibition starting at the Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg in summer 2006 and presenting 24 works, most of which have never been seen before. Read more About the Author Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), born in Rotterdam, studied art in the Netherlands and Belgium. Moving to the USA in 1926, he worked for the WPA Federal Art Project and in 1938 started his lifetime series of Women paintings. Honored by a major MoMA retrospective, he died on Long Island in 1997.Julie Sylvester is Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. David Sylvester (1926–2001) was a prominent writer on contemporary art, the curator of major exhibitions, and an art collector himself. He published the René Magritte catalogue raisonné and wrote seminal essays on Bacon, Moore, and de Kooning. Read more
Reviews
This volume helps us to see and understand a lot about de Kooning's late paintings. I was hoping that it would include more of his very late work, which many critics have dismissed as the work of a man in the throes of dementia. But the few very late paintings (1989-90) I have seen seem to suggest that, on the contrary, de Kooning was just beginning to embark on yet another phase of his amazing career trajectory before the ravages of Alzheimer's disease checked his progress. Thus I have given this book 4 rather than 5 stars. But just the same, it is a very valuable tome with many excellent illustrations of his late paintings, most never seen before (or since). For all lovers of abstract art, or art history in general, this is an important book and one worth searching out and buying.The quality of the printing and binding are not quite top-notch, but still good enough to make the book recommendable, thus also (again) the 4 rather than 5 star rating.