Vintage Willem de Kooning Hirshhorn Museum Collection Art Hardcover Book 1993
Pre-owned in excellent condition.
Willem de Kooning (b.1904), one of the great pioneers of Abstract
Expressionism, is a towering figure in the history of twentieth-century
painting - and widely regarded as America's greatest living painter. The
extraordinary Hirshhorn Museum collection of his work - the largest and
most significant public collection of his art in the world -
comprehensively represents all aspects of his art from the late 1930s to
the mid-1980s.
Patron Joseph H. Hirshhorn and his wife, Olga, forged
a special friendship with de Kooning, helping to fund his studio,
purchasing his paintings, drawings, and sculpture, and corresponding
with him for more than a decade. Hirshhorn acquired such emblematic de
Kooning paintings as Woman, 1948, from the artist's famed pictures
depicting women, and Zurich, 1947, from the daring group of
black-and-white works that established his reputation as a leading
Abstract Expressionist.
Hirshhorn also acquired such pivotal works from
the 1950s as Two Woman in the Country, in which de Kooning merged themes
of figure and landscape, as well as the first and most ferocious of his
paintings on door panels, Woman Sag Harbor, from the 1960s. Rounding
out the collection are bronzes from the early 1970s and lyrical
abstractions from the 1980s. In addition, Hirshhorn's prescient
collection of de Kooning's pastel, ink, and charcoal drawings allows us
to see the artist's creative process from early ideas to finished
paintings.
Author Judith Zilczer explores the evolution of de
Kooning's work from his academic training in his native Rotterdam and
his experience in New York in the 1930s through to his development both
of intensely expressionist style in evocative abstractions and
disturbing figurative works from the 1940s and 1950s. She traces these
courses in de Kooning's oeuvre to a number of influences, focusing
particularly on his creative response to the urban and cosmopolitan
environment of New York City, where he lived from 1926 to 1963 and where
he formed friendships with such artists as Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline,
and John Graham. Zilczer explores de Kooning's inventive combination of
sources from high art and popular culture, for the first time placing
his violent imagery within the tradition of caricature in Western art.
By contrast, Lynne Cooke outlines de Kooning's later work, made after he
moved to rural Long island in the early 1960s, and established his art
within the pastoral tradition of painting, as well as within the social
context of America in the 1960s. She views his art of these years as
analogous to the approaches to art taken by many of the Old Master
painters, who achieved "old-age" styles late in life.
A pioneering
essay on the technical qualities of de Kooning's work, reporting on
results of infrared examination and other conservation analyses, by
Zilczer and Susan Lake reveals the extent to which de Kooning's
spontaneous-looking imagery was in fact carefully crafted. The book is
completed with an extensive bibliography, chronology, and catalog
section, making this the most substantial publication of de Kooning's
work to date.
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