De Kooning

Since the 1950s the American painter Willem de Kooning has been a recognized world leader of avant-garde art. He was one of the pioneers in the movement known as Abstract Expressionism, or Action Painting-a movement in which the artist sought to reveal his ideas and feelings through the act of painting itself, and which placed New York at the center of the art world for the first time. His black-and-white abstract paintings, exhibited in his first one-man show in 1948, established de Kooning as a leader of Abstract Expressionism. However, unlike others of this school, he has continued to concern himself with direct references to the physical world. In the forties he began his remarkable Women series-painterly variations on the female form,which has continued to the present day. Another major motif in de Kooning's painting has been landscape, where he has shown a particular interest and virtuosity in the handling of light. In addition to being perhaps America's greatest living painter, de Kooning has also recently begun to create powerful expressionistic sculptures in bronze. His influence since the fifties has been widespread, and his large, impressive body of work has been of undeniable importance for the succeeding generations of American as well as foreign artists. This volume has been written by the brilliant and influential senior American critic on modern art, Harold Rosenberg, who coined the epithet "Action Painting." He discusses with understanding and depth de Kooning's approach to painting, his concept of art, and the major preoccupations of his work. The volume includes a new and lengthy interview with the artist as well as a-collection of important statements by him, a chronology of his life, and a bibliography. More than 200 reproductions, including paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from all stages of the artist's long and productive career, give us the richest and most comprehensive visual documentation of de Kooning's work.