The bestselling and critically acclaimed monograph on one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century

Willem de Kooning was a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism. MoMA's 2011 de Kooning retrospective drew record crowds, and his prodigious achievements continue to provoke and inspire subsequent generations of artists such as Cecily Brown, Rebecca Warren, and Jonathan Lasker.

This is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive monograph available on this artist. Sumptuously illustrated and produced, the book encompasses his major works and periods, including his controversial 'Woman' paintings, as well as a wealth of accompanying sketches and preparatory drawings.

An illustrated chronology maps de Kooning's life, career, and work, with photographs from the artist's archive interspersed throughout the book, enriching the reader's understanding of the wider art-historical context of his paintings. Judith Zilczer's critically acclaimed monograph is an essential addition to the libraries of a new audience of readers and de Kooning enthusiasts, offering an unprecedented and compelling examination of his body of work.

About the Authors:

About the Author:

Judith Zilczer, Curator Emerita of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, organized more than two dozen exhibitions in her twenty-nine years at the museum, where she served as Historian, Curator of Paintings, and Acting Chief Curator. Her exhibition publications include Willem de Kooning from the Hirshhorn Museum Collection (1993), Richard Lindner: Paintings and Watercolors, 1948–1977 (1996), and Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 (2005). A 1975 graduate of the doctoral program of the University of Delaware, she has received numerous awards, including the 2006 George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award of the Art Libraries Society of North America. Dr Zilczer has written and lectured widely on modern and contemporary art and is recognized as the leading authority on the art of Willem de Kooning.

Published in conjunction with the large-scale, all-medium, posthumous retrospective of Willem de Koonings career at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), this book offers an unparalleled opportunity to appreciate the development of the artists work as it unfolds over nearly seven decades.

Representing nearly every type of work de Kooning made, in both technique and subject matter, this retrospective includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints. Among these are the artists most famous, landmark paintings among them Pink Angels, Excavation and the celebrated third Woman series plus in-depth presentations of all his most important series, ranging from his figurative paintings of the early 1940s to the black-and-white compositions of 1948-49, and from the urban abstractions of the mid 1950s to the artists return to figuration in the 1960s and the large gestural abstractions of the following decade.

Also included is de Koonings famous yet largely unseen theatrical backdrop, the 17-foot-square Labyrinth (1946). With lavish, full-colour documentation, this volume is the most complete account of de Koonings career ever published.

The first comprehensive overview of the most significant paintings by de Kooning, the celebrated master of post-war American modernism.

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) is regarded as a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism and celebrated in the U.S. as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century painting. Yet in Europe, the artist has yet to be fully recognized as the important figure he was. That applies in particular to his work of the sixties and seventies, his years of retreat from urban life to live and work on Long Island. This part of his oeuvre bears the imprint of a fundamental experience of landscape, and it is here that he developed a style of figuration (which de Kooning never really abandoned) characterized by a new sense of color and energetic gesture.
This period of vigorous, pioneering creativity in the art of Willem de Kooning is explicitly illuminated for the first time in this book. Featuring a concentrated selection of painting in large formats, it shows how his works - although recognizable as landscapes - grew abstract under the influence of his intense experience of nature while his brushwork literally liberated itself from all bonds.

Erster prägnanter Überblick über die zentralen Gemälde der 1960er und 1970er Jahre de Koonings, des gefeierten Meisters der amerikanischen Nachkriegsmoderne.

Willem de Kooning gilt als führender Vertreter des Abstrakten Expressionismus und wird in den USA als zentrale Figur der Malerei des 20. Jahrhunderts gefeiert. In Europa hingegen ist der 1904 in Rotterdam geborene, 1997 in New York verstorbene Künstler noch immer in seiner vollen Bedeutung zu entdecken. Dies gilt insbesondere für sein Werk der 1960er und 1970er Jahre, in denen er - zurückgezogen vom Großstadtleben - auf Long Island lebt und arbeitet. Hier wird sein Werk durch die elementare Erfahrung der Landschaft geprägt, hier entwickelt sich die Figuration, die de Kooning nie wirklich verlässt, zu neuer Farbigkeit und durchpulster Gestik.
Erstmals wird diese fulminante und wegweisende Werkperiode Willem de Koonings im vorliegenden Band explizit beleuchtet. Anhand einer konzentrierten Auswahl von großformatigen Gemälden wird veranschaulicht, wie de Koonings Werke sich - obwohl Landschaftsbilder - aufgrund des intensiven Naturerlebnisses abstrahieren und die Pinselhandschrift sich geradezu entfesselt. Dabei werden auch die berühmten »Women«-Bilder des niederländisch-amerikanischen Künstlers einbezogen.

A leasing figure in the emergence of abstract expressionist painting in New York, Willem de Kooning arrived in the United States in 1926 as a twenty two years old stowaway from Holland. During the Depression years, he was a dedicated visitor to the museums and galleries of Manhattan, and did a brief stint as a WPA painter, which was curtailed because he was not a citizen. With resolute determination, de Kooning ventured beyond the radical departures of cubism toward the visceral physicality of the abstractions that comprised his first one person exhibition, in 1948. Five years later, an exhibition of women painted in agressive, lashing gestures stunned contemporaries not only for the vehemence of the artist s attack but also for the evident reversal of direction . Yet across six decades, the alternation and intertwining of abstraction and figuration remained fundamental to de Kooning's work.

The leader of the abstract expressionists

"If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous... It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today." — Willem de Kooning

Dutch-born American painter Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) was a leader of the abstract expressionist movement. Inspired by Arshile Gorky to abandon the realist style that had dominated his work in the 1930s, he began experimenting with abstraction in the 1940s and quickly gained critical success. His monumental Woman series of the 1950s — characterized by wild colour and aggressive overtones— was received with both controversy and acclaim. He continued to paint until the late 1980s, leaving behind a vast and impressive body of work.

About the Series:

Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography