Willem De Kooning

Leo Cohan, New Jersey (acquired from the artist)
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, November 17, 1971, Lot 12 (consigned by the above)
Allan Stone Gallery, New York (acquired from the above)
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1973

Brian O'Doherty, American Masters: the Voice and the Myth, New York, 1973 pp. 138-139, illustrated in color (photographed in the artist's studio by Hans Namuth) (reprinted in 1982 and 1988)
Exh. Cat., Guild Hall Museum, Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951 - 1981, 1981, fig. x, p. 17, illustrated (1968 studio photograph)

This painting is in excellent condition. The paint surface is sound and stable with no apparent restorations under Ultraviolet light. The artist taped the work to a wall or support during the time of execution and there are diagonal masking tape remains on each corner. In the lower left corner, the edge of the paper is compressed and crumpled slightly from contact with the linen liner, located 1" along the bottom right edge. There are faint traces of newsprint lettering on the right side and a deckled imprint in the upper left, both related to the artist's common practice of pressing newspaper sheets to the surface of his paintings. The work is framed in an ornate wood frame with linen and strip wood liner.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Untitled (Woman in a Forest) is a lyrical and sensuous painting that is important to Willem de Kooning's oeuvre both in terms of its iconography and style of brushwork, as well as its connection to one of the artist's earliest friends and supporters. Until 1971, Untitled (Woman in a Forest) was in the collection of Leo Cohan who was responsible for the artist's successful departure from the Netherlands to America. The glories of paint exhibited in works such as Untitled (Woman in a Forest) are quintessential de Kooning, whose wrist and arm become one with the rhythms of his paintbrush.

As with de Kooning's famed Woman series of an earlier decade, Untitled (Woman in a Forest) references ancient depictions of women found in Cycladic and Sumerian sculptures that the artist observed on trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. But rather than the piercing frontal glare and glinting teeth of the ferocious 1950s Women, de Kooning's female form of the 1960s more closely resembles the voluptuous abdomen and thighs of an ancient fertility goddess, lying invitingly supine in a natural landscape. Now the flesh of de Kooning's figures dematerialize into the swirling strokes that denote background and setting, presaging the complete merging of figure and ground in the paintings of the 1970s. Hints of the female's features remain as tantalizing glimpses of de Kooning's muse, often in the form of red lips and here betokened by a central green eye gazing at the artist and viewer.

The change in palette and style for de Kooning's work of the early 1960s coincides with the artist's move to Eastern Long Island, where he bought a house in the Springs area in 1963. In Untitled (Woman in a Forest), the volcanic urban hum underlying his brushwork in the 1950s, gives way to the sensuous strokes of paint that caress the curvature of the female form with their fluid application. Vibrant red tendrils of hair billow, appearing as though they are set afloat in an aqueous field. This same goddess-like female would reappear in many figurative and landscape paintings of the 1960s, culminating in the life-sized canvases of Woman, Sag Harbor, 1964 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and Woman Accabonac, 1966 in the Whitney Museum of American Art. Warm flesh tones and verdant colors of nature replace the harsher tones of the 1950s with as much vibrancy as the newly sinuous appreciation in the liquid properties of oil. Clearly, de Kooning was at home in the open sky, fields and waterscape of Long Island, often acknowledging that it was reminiscent of his early youth in the Netherlands.

The provenance of Untitled (Woman in a Forest) is linked to the de Kooning's arrival to America. According to his biographers, Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning's desire to come to the New World despite a lack of funds led to failed efforts to stowaway and to gain passage across the Atlantic. The solution arrived when de Kooning's close friend from the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts, Benno Randolfi, introduced the artist to Leo Cohan. Cohan was the brother of Randolfi's sister-in-law, and had already traveled to America as a waiter on merchant marine ships. In order to return to America, Cohan needed money to pay union dues and he agreed to smuggle de Kooning aboard his next departure if de Kooning could come up with the required twenty-five dollars. De Kooning borrowed the money from his father and eventually, Cohan and de Kooning embarked for America on July 18, 1926, with de Kooning hidden in the engine room. (Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master New York, 2005, pp. 56-57).  Cohan and de Kooning traveled via Virginia, Boston and Rhode Island before reaching Manhattan's South Street Seaport and then settling for a year in Hoboken, New Jersey (Ibid, p. 61-62).

The friendship between de Kooning and Leo Cohan lasted for many years and it was Cohan who encouraged de Kooning to explore Manhattan: "I said to him, 'Bill, you mustn't hang around Hoboken. You must go to Manhattan where you will find other artists'." When de Kooning found out that his first commercial art job in Manhattan paid less than the house painting that he was doing in Hoboken, he was dismayed. But Cohan urged him to continue on in Manhattan and to pursue the company of other artists (Ibid, p. 67-68). Several decades later, Cohan was asked by de Kooning to accompany him to his 1968 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.  De Kooning was nervous to travel and anxious for his long over-due homecoming, having always felt guilt over his departure in 1926, when he did not bid farewell to family and friends. As Stevens and Swan noted: "At one point, when de Kooning became so anxious that he threatened to cancel the trip, Cohan countered with a brilliant piece of wile. If you do not return, he told de Kooning, 'The whole world will think you are eccentric.' The prospect of being presented as an eccentric artist, one of the oldest clichés of modernism, so appalled de Kooning that he immediately took a brighter view of the trip. [And] When the Stedelijk balked at the addition of Cohan to the party, de Kooning took offense". De Kooning made it clear that if his friend could not accompany him on the voyage, "Well, then, I'm not going either." (Ibid., pp. 508-509).  It was the original duo crossing the Atlantic by sea again.  Untitled (Woman in a Forest) with its lyrical love of paint and implicit evocation of sun and nature is also a reminder of the friendship between the two men. Without the assistance of Leo Cohan, it is possible that the New York School might never have known one of its most important and brilliant painters, whose artistic influence is nearly impossible to erase.