Willem de Kooning, the Dutch American painter had a very perceptive mind, a strong work ethic and persistent self-doubt but was driven by a determination to succeed. His intense exploration of the human form and abstraction played out against a background of innovation and contradiction, and saw the charismatic de Kooning play a seminal role in the development of post-war American art.

Willem de Kooning’s Early Life

Willem de Kooning was born on 24 April 1904 into a working-class family in the port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. His father, Leendert de Kooning, and his mother, Cornelia Nobel, separated when he was just three years old. Willem experienced a modest but rather difficult, upbringing living primarily with his mother. At this time in the Netherlands, it was highly unusual for the husband to instigate a divorce. After the divorce Cornelia moved house, taking Willem and his sister Marie with her. They first settled in Josephstraat in West Rotterdam before moving later to a small two-story house in North Rotterdam.

On 8 April 1908, Cornelia remarried. Just five days before the marriage she sent Willem to live with his father. But Willem’s father also remarried later that year on the 25 November. So de Kooning was sent back to live with his mother.

Willem de Kooning’s Early Education

In the Netherlands during the early 1900’s, school was mandatory only for the first six years after that children were usually apprenticed to a trade. So, at the age of 12, de Kooning left school and became an apprentice at Gidding & Zonen, a commercial art and decorating firm. Soon recognising de Kooning’s talent, the company encouraged him to enrol in night classes at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques (now known as the Willem de Kooning Academy). There, he received rigorous training in classical drawing, painting, and design, and absorbed influences from Dutch masters and the early modernists alike. Standards were very high with students not allowed to speak once a class had started so all their attention could be concentrated on detail.

Willem de Kooning’s Early Working Life

In 1920 de Kooning went to work for the art director of a large department store. In late spring of 1920, after his third year at the Academie, he left home after being knocked him to the floor by his mother during a violent outburst. He also left his job. Willem said later “At sixteen I stopped work and became a bohemian.”

De Kooning initially stayed with his sister Marie, her husband and their two-year-old son who had moved to Amsterdam in 1919. But he didn’t stay long before he returned to Rotterdam and enrolled for a fourth year at the Academy. It was here he produced Still Life: Bowl, Pitcher and Jug of 1921. This was his first major artwork of art to survive.

Escape to America

But de Kooning was growing restless in post-World War I Europe. He wanted to explore new possibilities, and he yearned to travel. His desire was finally realised in 1926 when he stowed away on a British freighter that was bound for Argentina. The ship first docked in Newport News, Virginia, USA where de Kooning jumped ship and entered the United States illegally. By 1927, he had settled in New York City, where supported himself by working as a house painter, carpenter, and commercial artist.

Despite being an illegal immigrant, de Kooning soon integrated into the city’s vibrant art scene. He studied briefly at the National Academy of Design and joined various circles of bohemian artists in Greenwich Village. His natural talent and European training earned him the respect of his fellow artists, particularly Arshile Gorky, who would become a close friend and profound influence. It was Gorky’s fusion of Surrealism and abstraction that inspired de Kooning to explore and eventually pursue a non-figurative approach to painting.

Throughout the 1930s, de Kooning struggled financially. He joined the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project in 1935, which was a New Deal programme that provided employment for artists during the Great Depression. But in 1937 he was forced to resign because of his undocumented status. Yet this profound setback only deepened his desire to pursue a professional artistic career.

Willem de Kooning’s Art Career Begins

De Kooning’s paintings first featured in the 1936 exhibition “New Horizons in American Art.” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But it was during the late 1930s and early 1940s that de Kooning’s painting really began to develop when he created several black-and-white abstractions influenced by Cubism and Surrealism. They revealed a quite different aesthetic to that of his contemporaries. It is also during this period that he began experimenting with introducing human figures into his work, although they were greatly abstracted.

In 1938 Willem de Kooning met Elaine Fried, after her teacher at the American Artists School in New York introduced at a Manhattan cafeteria. She was 20 years old and he 34. Elaine had admired De Kooning’s artwork and after the meeting, he began to teach her. They painted in his loft apartment loft at 143 West 21st Street. Apparently, he was very harsh in his criticism of her work and destroyed many of her drawings, but she rose to the challenge eventually becoming an influential art critic and painter in her own right. Willem de Kooning and Elaine Fried were married on 9th December 1943. Theirs was very much an open marriage, both had affairs, and their relationship was often stormy. Strained by professional ambition, poverty, and alcoholism. They separated in 1956 but reconciled in the mid 70’s.

De Kooning’s Career Takes Off

By the mid-1940s, de Kooning was exhibiting alongside artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. Artists who were pushing abstraction towards what would later come to be known as “Abstract Expressionism.”

His first solo exhibition was held at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1948. It featured works like Black Friday and other gestural compositions. The show received critical acclaim and established him as a significant force in the emerging New York School. The same year, de Kooning became an American citizen, which legitimised his status allowing him to explore greater professional opportunities. One of which led to the painter Josef Albers inviting him to teach at the famed Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the summer of 1948.

In 1949 De Kooning was shown a projector by Yves Kline and subsequently used one to create some very large abstract works. Despite the fact his drinking was becoming excessive. In the early 1950s despite his personal issues, De Kooning’s reputation grew rapidly. Particularly after the unveiling of his infamous Woman series. These large-scale paintings, begun in 1950 marked a provocative return to figure painting at a time when pure abstraction was all the rage. The women in the paintings are grotesque, powerful, and heavily stylised, with broad, slashing brushstrokes and distorted anatomies. The introduction of figures into his work led some critics, like Clement Greenberg, to label his work to be regressive. De Kooning responded by remarking, “Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented.”

De Kooning Creates the ‘Woman’ Series

But critics were divided in their opinion of his Woman series, some viewed the works as misogynistic, while others praised their raw power and psychological depth. De Kooning defended the series as a continuation of his exploration of the figure, which although rooted in classical tradition could, he felt, still be explored in modern expression. It is without doubt that his blend of figuration and abstraction helped redefine the possibilities of modern painting and helped to established him as a central figure in post-war American art. His choice to explore the tension between abstraction and figuration was a quite different approach to that of Jackson Pollock’s all-over drip painting or Marc Rothko’s colour field painting. Critics classed all as abstract expressionists, but de Kooning made it very clear that he rejected any connection between his work and the Abstract Expressionists, or any other art movement for that matter.

In 1953, de Kooning exhibited Woman I amongst other works at the Sidney Janis Gallery. It was subsequently purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This further enhanced his reputation. De Kooning had started Woman I in 1950, but it wasn’t completed until 1952.

The paintings fame was enhanced by its creation being photographed by Rudy Burckhardt and also by Thomas B. Hess’ article “de Kooning Paints a Picture,” in the Art News magazine. In the article Hess described the picture’s creation as ‘a voyage that involved hundreds of revisions, several abandonments and restarts, and was only completed minutes before the work was loaded onto the truck to go to the gallery’.

Willem de Kooning’s Move to Long Island

During the early 1950’s de Kooning began to experiment with new materials and subjects including abstract landscapes, urban scenes, bicycles, and mythology as well as his paintings inspired by women. After his separation from Elaine in 1957 he divided his time between New York City and Long Island. At Long Island the coastal landscape inspired in de Kooning a more lyrical, open approach to his compositions. Works such as Ruth’s Zowie and Door to the River were produced during this period and exhibit a freer, more painterly style, with wide colour fields and a loosening of form.

In 1962, after living in the U.S. for thirty-five years, he finally became an American citizen. In 1963, he designed and built a studio and home in East Hampton, Long Island and would for the next few years divide his time between his new abode and New York. It was in East Hampton during the early 1960’s, that he met and befriended a number of high-profile individuals, including Paul McCartney. In 1964 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Exploring Sculpture

During the 1960s, de Kooning began to create sculpture, at first working with clay and later with bronze. The figurative forms he created echoed the energy of his paintings and were first shown in 1969 at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York.

His first international retrospective exhibition was held in 1968 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and organized by his friend Thomas Hess, the art editor and curator. De Kooning attended the opening, which was his first trip back to his native country since leaving in 1926. The exhibition later travelled to London, New York, and Chicago. Despite this success, de Kooning still struggled with alcoholism, which resulted in periods of isolation and emotional instability which at times affected his output of paintings.

Willem de Kooning’s Reconciles with his Wife

In 1971 de Kooning’s move to Long Island became permanent. Surrounded by the ocean, the woods and large skies provided him with new inspiration. Elaine returned to live with de Kooning around 1975. She hoped she might help him adopt a healthier lifestyle, but the decades of hard drinking proved a difficult adversary to defeat. Nevertheless, she did reorganise his studio structure and hired new assistants. In many ways their previous companionship was rekindled. Her return coincided with his work displaying a more joyous almost improvisational abstraction which can be seen in works such as Whose Name Was Writ in Water (1975) and Untitled VII (1981).

But despite his continued intermittent struggles with alcohol and his mental health, de Kooning’s reputation continued to soar during the late 1970’s. In 1978, he was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Prize and had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art with critics hailing his resilience and the vitality of his artworks.

Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

In 1984 de Kooning was commissioned by the St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York, to paint a triptych for its altar. But in 1985 it was rejected as too personal a form of art for group worship. It was around this time, that he began to display signs of cognitive decline which eventually led to him being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Elaine continued to support him but in 1989, she died of lung cancer. This was a devastating loss for de Kooning and as a result he came under the guardianship of his daughter, Lisa who was granted power of attorney over his affairs. During the time under the guardianship of his daughter, de Kooning’s studio continued to produce works attributed to him, but concerns arose over how much he was actually involved in the production of the paintings and the ethics of marketing paintings created by someone in such a compromised position. But others argued the works were valid because Abstract Expressionism was an intuitive, rather than intellectual process.

Willem de Kooning’s Final Years

Despite the disagreements on whether his paintings were serene meditations on form or actually de Kooning paintings at all, his work still attracted commercial success and scholarly attention.

De Kooning painted his last work in 1991, before finally succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease 6 years later on 19 March 1997. He was 92 years old. His body was cremated but the location of his ashes is unknown.

Willem de Kooning once said, “Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity.” Yet Willem de Kooning managed to discover something profoundly expressive in his work. His continual reinvention, his resistance to being pigeonholed, saw him happiest in the tension between order and chaos, between pure abstraction and figurative painting. He was a relentless pioneer who had a profound effect on twentieth-century art.