- 53
Willem De Kooning
Description
- Willem de Kooning
- Untitled XIII
- signed on the stretcher
- oil on canvas
- 70 x 80 in. 177.8 x 203.2 cm.
- Executed in 1983.
Provenance
Willem de Kooning Foundation, New York
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
PaceWildenstein, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2003
Exhibited
San Francisco, John Berggruen Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Paintings 1967–1984, October – November 2002, p. 23, illustrated in color
Literature
Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Willem de Kooning: The Last Beginning, 2007, pp. 58-59, illustrated in color (the artist and Lisa de Kooning with the present work)
Carolyn Lanchner, Willem de Kooning, New York, 2011, p. 44, illustrated (the artist and Lisa de Kooning with the present work)
Condition
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Catalogue Note
Much like the late work of Pablo Picasso, de Kooning’s 1980s paintings contain the sustained energy and technical finesse of earlier achievements, returning to the grandly lyrical manner of his Cubist abstractions of the 1940s. The composition of Untitled XIII is entirely sympathetic with the biomorphic silhouettes of the black and white abstractions such as Orestes of 1947. However, filtered through the experiences and paintings of the intervening decades, most notably the sun and light-filled East Hampton landscapes, the content of the 1980s paintings has been radically simplified and illuminated, leaving behind the baroque flourishes of paint-filled gestures in the 1970s abstract landscapes to find a distilled fusion of color and line. Untitled XIII is the embodiment of the tranquility and confidence de Kooning gained through the experience of his sixty year career which was punctuated by bursts of creativity that produced cohesive and startling shifts in his aesthetic while remaining acutely his own.
The paintings of the early 1980s marked just such a momentous change as de Kooning, spending most of his time in the calm of East Hampton, began to paint with a new grace and fertility which he viewed from the perspective of a long career as a premier artist. “I feel that I have found myself more, the sense that I have all my strength at my command. I think you can do miracles with what you have if you accept it …I am more certain the way I use paint and the brush.” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, 1994, p. 199) This new balance and clear-eyed confidence gave birth to an explosive creative energy and vigor which culminated in a series of monumental Untitled compositions. As seen in Untitled XIII, de Kooning’s work is radically simplified and luminous, with dancing rhythms and diaphanous lines that are the ultimate realization and emancipation of de Kooning’s artistic vision. Unrestrained yet deliberate, they dazzle with musical vitality, in bold hues of red and blue, enlivened by a piquant purple, against the startling white that characterized the series. “In the 1980’s works, the essential procedures and techniques were not changed but simplified, and the vocabulary of forms was retained but clarified.” (Gary Garrels, "Three Toads in the Garden: Line Color and Form" in Exh. Cat., San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, the 1980’s, 1996, p. 28) These paintings boast an enlivened spirit and a new freedom in which the artist’s innate gifts for line, color and form remain paramount.
Untitled XIII still displays the unmistakable traces of de Kooning’s remarkable touch and fluid wrist. The artist’s use of line had been ascendant throughout his career and, though de Kooning now further reduced his compositions to a few whiplash swaths, his works maintain their traditional rhythmic character and aesthetic spirit. With simplicity evocative of Piet Mondrian’s late canvases, de Kooning’s sinuous strokes loop about in asymmetrical and elegant formations. While Untitled XIII maintains the sustained energy and emotion of his earlier work, it encompasses the organic lyricism of Matisse as well as the dynamic equilibrium of Mondrian, reinforcing one of the most vital characteristics of the artist’s oeuvre: his continual insistence on invention, freedom and risk.