Willem De Kooning :: Biographies

Willem De Kooning Willem De Kooning had been widely acknowledged as one of the greatestpainters of this century known for his daring originality. Severalexhibitions in the U.S. and abroad gravel celebrated the artisticachievements of this eminent artists 60-year career. My essay covers partof his early life with real focus on his late paintings. His last works,painted in the 1980s, as he was in deteriorating health have come undercriticism by some critics. Willem de Kooning was born on April 24, 1904 inRotterdam, the Netherlands. His father was a beer distributor and hismother ran a bar. At the age of twelve he became an apprentice at acommercial design and decorating firm. He studied for viii years atRotterdams leading art school. In 1926, de Kooning secured a passage on astreamer to the United States, illegally entering and settling in new-madeJersey. He quickly moved to Manhattan, painted signs and worked as acarpenter in New York City. Then in 1935, he landed a job with t he WorksProgress Administration, a government agency that put artists to workduring the Great Depression. By the next decade, he had attained a range inthe downtown art scene among his fellow artists. By the late 1940s, de Kooning along with Arshile Gorky, JacksonPollock, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, began to be recognized as a major(ip)painter in a movement called Abstract Expressionism. This new school ofthought shifted the center of twentieth century art form Paris to New York.Willem de Kooning was recognized as the only painter who had one foot inEurope and one in America. He combined classical European cooking inHolland with a love for popular American culture. The restlessness andenergy of American life was a source of great inspiration and passion forhim. Gary Garrells, the straits curator at the San Fransisco Museum of ModernArt said, He had the wildness of Pollock but mixed with the impeccablecraftsmanship of the European tradition. He was not evoke in style, he was interested in the process of looking and knowing and getting under theskin. Willem de Kooning, 93, was the last survivor of his famous peers.One would not have predicted for him a great old age. Among the leadingfigures of hard-living generation he belonged by temperament and talent toa romantic tradition of artists who burned the physical and psychical fuel ofthemselves with devastating speed and completeness. Few of de Kooningsclosest friends and colleagues survived the harshness of the 1940s and