Willem De Kooning

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (acquired from the artist)
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper, August - September 1972 (ed. no. unknown)
Toronto, Pollock Gallery, De Kooning: Major Paintings and Sculptures, October - November 1974 (ed. no. unknown)
Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, De Kooning: New Paintings and Sculpture, February - March 1976 (ed. 3/7)
Los Angeles, James Corcoran Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, May - June 1976 (ed. 3/7)
Austin, University of Texas Austin, De Kooning: Lithographs, Sculpture and Painting, October - November 1976 (ed. 4/7)
Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle; Eindhoven, Van Abbemuseum; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, The Strange Nature of Money, November 1977 - September 1979, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Berkeley, University Art Museum, University of California, Matrix 12: Willem de Kooning, 1978 (ed. 3/7)
New York, Xavier Fourcade Inc., Willem de Kooning: New Paintings, 1981-82, March - May 1982 (ed. no. unknown)
New York, Xavier Fourcade Inc., Willem de Kooning: the Complete Sculpture, 1969-1981, May - June 1983 (ed. no. unknown)
Ridgefield, Aldrich Museum, Trustees Choice, 1983 (ed. no. unknown)
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Berlin, Akademie der Kunst; Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Willem de Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture, December 1983 - September 1984, cat. no. 275, p. 259, illustrated (New York), p. 263, illustrated (Berlin) and cat. no. 438, p. 231, ilustrated (ed. no. unknown)
London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, Willem de Kooning Paintings and Sculpture 1971 - 1983, November 1984 - January 1985, cat. no. 16, illustrated in color (ed. 7/7)
London, Anthony d'Offay, Sculpture, December 1994 - January 1995, no. 18, illustrated in color (ed. 7/7)
New York, C & M Arts, Figurative Art from the 20th Century, October - December 1999 (ed. no. unknown)
New York, Gagosian Gallery, What's Modern, November - December 2004, pp. 68-9, illustrated in color (ed. 7/7)

Exh. Cat., New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, de Kooning, 1972, no. 44, illustrated (ed. 2/7) and illustrated in process in the foundry
Exh. Cat., Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Art in Space: Some Turning Points, 1973, fig. 6, illustrated (ed. 4/7)
Harold Rosenberg, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1973, pl. 197, illustrated (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Minneapolis, Walker Art Center (and travelling), De Kooning: Drawings/Sculptures, 1974, cat. no. 146, pl. no. 62, illustrated (ed. 4/7)
Exh. Cat., West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery of Art, De Kooning: Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures 1967 – 1975, 1975, cat. no. 25, illustrated in color (ed. 4/7) and illustrated on the inside front cover of the announcement
Exh. Cat., Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum (and travelling), Willem de Kooning: beelden en litho's, 1976, cat. no. B20, illustrated (ed. 6/7)
Houston, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, De Kooning: Recent Works, 1977 (checklist) [ed. 4/7]
Duisburg, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, De Kooning, Plastik, Grafik, 1977, cat. no. 20, exhibition listing (ed. 6/7)
Exh. Cat. Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Willem de Kooning: sculptures, lithographies, peintures, 1977, pl. 20, illustrated (ed. 6/7)
Exh. Cat., Belgrade, Museum of Contemporary Art (and travelling), Willem de Kooning: Paintings and Sculptures, 1977 (ed. 5/7)
Exh. Cat., Edinburgh, Fruit Market Gallery; London, Serpentine Gallery, The Sculptures of de Kooning with Related Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs, 1977, cat. no. 20, illustrated (ed. 3/7)
Exh. Cat. New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Willem de Kooning in East Hampton, 1963 – 1977, 1978, cat. no. 89, p. 120, illustrated (AP 1/3)
Exh. Cat., Cedar Falls, University of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art (and travelling), De Kooning 1969 – 78, 1978, cat. no. 34, p. 45, illustrated (ed. 6/7)
Exh. Cat., Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, 1979, cat. no. 123, p. 140, illustrated (ed. 6/7)
Exh. Cat., East Hampton, Guild Hall, Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951 – 1981, 1981, cat. no. 71, p. 33, illustrated (ed. AP 2/3) (titled Seated Figure on a Bench)
Exh. Cat., Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum (and travelling), Willem de Kooning, The North Atlantic Light 1960 – 1983, 1983, cat. no. 68, p. 109, illustrated (ed. AP 3/3)
Exh. Cat., Cologne, Kunsthalle Cologne, Willem de Kooning: Skulpturen, 1983, cat. no. 17, p. 67, illustrated (ed.6/7)
Harry F. Gaugh, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1983, fig. no. 88, p. 99, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Illustrated Biennial Report 1980-82, London, Tate Gallery, 1983, no. T.3162, illustrated (4/7)
Joop Joosten, 20 Jaar Verzmelem (20 Years of Collecting), Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 1984, cat. no. 438, p. 231, illustrated (AP 3/3)
Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Transformations in Sculpture: Four Decades of American and European Art, 1985, cat. no. 41, p. 103, illustrated (ed. 5/7)
Diane Waldman, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1988, fig. no. 94, p. 122, illustrated (ed. no. unknown)
Philippe Sollers, De Kooning, Vite I and Vite II (Oeuvres), Paris, 1988, no. 77, illustrated (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution (and travelling), Willem de Kooning, 1993, cat. no. 46, p. 143, illustrated in color (AP 1/3)
Exh. Cat., Seattle, Henry Art Gallery, Washington University, Modern Masters and the Figure: Picasso to de Kooning, 1993 (ed. 3/7)
Exh. Cat. Newport Beach, Newport Harbor Art Museum, The Essential Gesture, 1994, pp. 28-9, illustrated (ed. 3/7)
Exh. Cat., Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, Willem de Kooning in Seattle: Selected Works from 1943 to 1985 in Public and Private Collections, 1995, no. 15, illustrated (ed. 3/7)
Exh. Cat., New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, 1996, cat. no. 18, p. 56, illustrated (AP 1/3)
Exh. Cat. Washington, D. C., The White House, Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House, Exhibition V, 1996 (AP 1/3)
Jean-Louis Prat, La Sculpture des Peintures, Saint-Paul, 1997, no. 175, pp. 240-2 (ed. 4/7)
Exh. Cat. New York, C & M Arts, Willem de Kooning: Selected Paintings and Sculpture 1964-73, October - December 2000, no. 10, illustrated in color (ed. 3/7)
Exh. Cat., Valencia, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, (and travelling), Willem de Kooning, 2001, p. 158, illustrated in color (AP 3/3)
Barbara Hess, Willem de Kooning, Cologne, 2004, p. 70, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda, Sculpture by Painters: Painting in Dialogue with Plastic Art, July - October 2008 (ed. no. 4/7)

Total engagement with the material – with the substance in his hands – is the most striking feature of Willem de Kooning's aesthetic soul. Oil pigment swirls across his canvas in grand sweeping gestures as he breathes life into his medium. The faithfulness to the nature of his material extends to de Kooning's sculptures such as Seated Woman on a Bench, where the clay retains its primal heaviness in the initial modeling, as well as its pliable softness now become illusory in bronze.  Other than Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning is the only Abstract Expressionist painter to produce major sculptures. For both artists, sculpture served to distill the most quintessential nature of their art: in the case of de Kooning, his role as a master of kinetic touch is rendered as eloquently in bronze as in oil paint. It is no wonder that the eminent art critic David Sylvester titled his text on de Kooning's sculptures as "Forces of Nature." (Exh. Cat., New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Willem de Kooning Sculpture, 1996, p. 48)

De Kooning's venture into the three-dimensional form began during a period of partial hiatus in his painting, and the energy he derived from his experimentation with plastic objects would reinvigorate his late 1970s canvas paintings in one of his most successful and sustained outbursts of creativity.  While in Rome in 1969, de Kooning visited Herzl Emanuel, an old friend who had a bronze foundry in Trastevere. On Emanuel's invitation, de Kooning produced a series of thirteen small, experimental clay sculptures which were each cast in editions of six, and sent to his New York dealer after de Kooning's return to the United States. Fourcade and Henry Moore were among those who praised the thirteen sculptures and encouraged de Kooning to expand into a more ambitious scale. De Kooning followed their advice, and for the next five years produced a series of bronzes on a larger scale.

Of the original thirteen clay Roman figures, de Kooning only enlarged and cast Seated Woman upon his return to New York in 1969. From 1972-1974, de Kooning modeled and cast a new group of eleven figures which included Seated Woman on a Bench.  Seated Woman would also eventually be one of the three compositions that de Kooning would expand to monumental scale in 1980-84, signaling de Kooning's deep affinity to this particular form.  Seated Woman on a Bench does not include the supine attendant figure that occupies space beside Seated Woman, and instead focuses on the dynamics of a single in the classic seated pose. The surface of Seated Woman is a more complex range of textures and intensity of execution than its larger, smoother sister sculpture, and is closer in spirit to the craggy and crinkled surfaces of the Clamdigger, Large Torso and Hostess, all also dating from the 1972-1974 series of eleven sculptures.

Knotted, curling sinews of bronze wind themselves through the face, torso, hands and feet of the figure, almost seducing the viewer into touching the surface and following the muscle sense of the artist's presence in the working of the sculpture. Its surface reads like a map of the work's creation: grooves and hollows where de Kooning's fingertips dug into the soft clay, smooth areas where his thumb has rubbed a trough or raised a crest. As Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan put it in their Pulitzer Prize winning biography of de Kooning, it's "not just touch as it's often defined in the art books, as something specifically fine that only a connoisseur can appreciate, but touch as the visceral act of pushing and squeezing and shaping" (Willem de Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2004, p. 549)

In Seated Woman on a Bench and other sculptures from 1972-1974, one can sense de Kooning's growing confidence with this new medium as he expands the originality and scope of this body of work. As a way of moderating his intense relation with the material at hand and to break established habits and gestures, de Kooning often sculpted with his eyes closed or while wearing gloves. The gloves helped to make each tug, push and caress bolder and stronger.  Even more than in his sweeping gestural oils of the 1970s, the viewer can sense the artist's entire body – fingers, muscles, tendons and joints - in the creation of his most important sculptures, such as Seated Woman on a Bench.  The gravitas of the figure, legs spread wide and feet firmly planted on the ground, brings a stronger sense of solidity to this sculpture than the fragmentary heads or the airborne Floating Figure (1972). There is less a sense of slippage than one gets from the sinuous Hostess (1973) or the cropped Large Torso (1974) whose point of contact on the base is obscured. Only Clamdigger (1972) shares the same sense of substantial and grounded presence as de Kooning's seated women.

The figure had long been a presence in de Kooning's oeuvre. Only occasionally is there no trace of the human form and more likely, it is the fragmentary underpinning of his abstract compositions in paint. At critical junctures in de Kooning's career, the human figure comes roaring to the fore yet again, and the early 1970s sculptures mark as strong and insistent a return of the figure as did de Kooning's heralded and iconic Women of the 1950s. Andrew Forge noted that "It has become obvious over the years that the human figure is the real center of [de Kooning's] art. The various times when he has departed from it have been episodes that, once they have been worked through, have allowed him to make closer and richer engagement with the figure. The sculpture helps us to see this. ...With each new appearance of the figure in his work, a haptic mode of perception is more and more in evidence, that is, a mode in which touch, body-feeling, and muscular sensation take precedence over vision. Differentiations of contour and texture, and potentials for action, dominate. .. There can hardly ever have been sculptures made in which the engagement with the material is more rawly exposed.'' (Matthew Marks Gallery, Ibid, p. 37)  Seated Woman on a Bench, placed four-square on its low perch, is one of the most forthright of the sculptures by de Kooning. Referencing classic motifs from royal portraits to enthroned Madonnas to noble ladies of opulent wealth, Seated Woman on a Bench is also a tour de force of intimate surface detail and primal force. It is one of the most accomplished sculptures that de Kooning made, and stands at the extraordinary climax of an adventure that was as brilliant as it was brief, a perfect extension of the artist's painting into the solidity of a third dimension