Willem de Kooning

Artemis, Switzerland
Fourcade Droll, Inc., New York
Pollock Gallery, Toronto
Mr. and Mrs. H. Klamer, Willowdale, Ontario
Christie's, New York, November 3, 1987, Lot 42
Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, M. Knoedler and Company, de Kooning: Recent Paintings, November - December 1967, p. 57, illustrated
Toronto, Pollock Gallery, de Kooning: Major Paintings and Sculpture, October - November 1974
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Willem de Kooning in East Hampton, February - April 1978, cat. no. 8, p. 37, illustrated in color
Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Eduardo Chillida/Willem De Kooning, October 1979 - January 1980, cat. no. 35, p. 66, illustrated in color
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Berlin, Akademie der Künste; Paris, Musée National d'Art Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, Willem de Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture, December 1983 - September 1984, cat. no. 221, p. 206, illustrated in color, New York and Berlin catalogues; p. 120, illustrated in color, Paris catalogue

Gabriella Drudi, Le Grandi Monografie: de Kooning, Milan 1972, cat. no. 132, illustrated in color
Philippe Sollers, De Kooning, Vite, vol. II, Turin 1988, p. 55, illustrated in color

Willem de Kooning was one of the pioneers of the Abstract Expressionist movement and a giant amongst twentieth-century painters, having created a varied body of work that spanned nearly seventy years and which has been celebrated in countless retrospectives the world over. As both artist and personality, he bridged the gap between the Apollonian reserve of Arshile Gorky, the naturalist grandeur of Franz Kline and the Dionysian abandon of Jackson Pollock. As such, de Kooning was seen to spearhead the germinating sensibilities of ‘Action Painting’, and history now records him as that School’s chief architect and most important protagonist.

Included in the artist’s major retrospective that traveled to New York, Paris and Berlin, Running Figure, from 1966, is an outstanding painting that displays a wonderful synthesis of two commanding themes that dominated de Kooning’s artistic enterprise: that of the landscape with the female figure. During this period, in the mid 1960’s, this was a subject he would deliberate upon in a number of paintings and drawings. Here powerful architectonic elements build up the pictorial field, the product of an energetic proliferation of stroke, form and plane.  There is joy, playfulness and ribaldry evident on this surface, voiced in the work’s bold brushwork and bright colors. Indeed, as Henry Geldzahler wrote of de Kooning’s work, here we see a surface “… packed with shapes, allusions, actions and counteractions, they pile ambiguity on ambiguity; sometimes, it would seem, they are painted at lightning speed, at others in a more relaxed contour-loving gesture.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Abstract Landscapes, 1955-1963, 1987, n.p.)

The artist’s technique, brushwork and use of color are dazzling in Running Figure. Sunny yellows, bright oranges and emerald greens, to name but a few, are elegantly orchestrated so as to clearly define the artist’s sweeping strokes of his brush. The fleshier section that dominates the left half of the surface indicates the figure, her legs thrust downward towards the lower right corner. Each urgent brushstroke continues the momentum of this figure running through a vortex of colors.