Early years (1917-1934)                 Reproductions list 1917-1934

Willem de Kooning was born in 1904 in Rotterdam, Holland. From 1916 till 1925 he studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Arts. Little works from these years have survived. The earliest reproductions include three still lifes: two oil paintings attributed to 1917, and a drawing from 1921 (DW 8). Both are perfectly executed academic pieces with pots, cups and bowls, showing De Kooning's capacities for realistic works. Then there's a Male portrait drawing (WM 27) and a Jugendstil like drawing entitled The kiss (S 82). In the last decades a series of about forty works resurfaced, about all cartoon drawings, that have been kept by the family where De Kooning stayed during his visit to Belgium in 1924. They have been reproduced in a dissertation (JW), of which the illustrations are virtually unobtainable - examples however are present as MR 51, SS 52 and JZ.
De Kooning would seldom return to realism in his art. An exception is for instance the Portrait of Elaine from 1941. But De Kooning did use his ability for realistic drawing for making commercial signs and advertisement, which he did as a side job till the forties. Three examples have been reproduced. One stems from Harper's Bazaar, March 1940 (CP 182), with portraits of little girls. The other two (S 80/SS 184) show pipe smoking men in advertisements for Model smoking tobacco (1943).
In 1926 De Kooning moved to the USA where he started working as a carpenter and house painter. The next year he settled in New York. Here he started painting geometric works loosely related to reality, like Untitled (1928, S 99) and The farmhouse (1932, HG 10). Two paintings are Matisse influenced: Still life (1927, Y2 1) and another Still life (1929, CP 172 l.). The Untitled painting from 1931 (DW 19) is a purely abstract geometric painting.

Portraits and abstracts (1935-1950)                 Reproductions list 1935-1950

During the recession of the thirties the US government started sponsoring projects for artists. De Kooning was assigned to several projects for painting murals. Still much work got lost or destroyed be the artist himself, like the drawing that was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. He now decided to make being an artist his main business, but kept doing side jobs when necessary. In the murals De Kooning combined figurative and geometric art. In his paintings he started following two paths simultanuously. The first was abstract, geometric at first and composed of interwoven lines and fields later on. The other direction stemmed from portrait painting. In both directions De Kooning's personal style became more explicit. Among the artist that contributed to De Kooning's stylistic development are Arshile Gorky for the abstracts and Pablo Picasso for the portraits. It's interesting to see that De Kooning would change styles more often during his career and reach the same high level in each direction.
In 1948 he agreed to holding his first one man exhibition at the Egan gallery, where recent black and white abstract paintings with calligrahic lines were shown. Till then De Kooning had preferred group exhibitions. The purchase by The Chicago museum of Modern Art of the large abstract painting Excavation (1950, HG 34) confirmed De Kooning's growing reputation. The portraits show a diversity ranging between faces that are basically realistically painted on abstract backgrounds (like the Portrait of Max Margulis) and figures and shapes that are becoming more and more distorted through the years, where the expressive strength of the painting becomes the main issue. This specifically applies to the woman paintings.

Women torsos (1951-1954).                               Reproductions list 1951-1954

Between 1950 and the first part of 1955 De Kooning spent most of his time painting and drawing women torsos with their female features exaggerated (large breasts and hips). Many pencil and pastel drawings were made. On canvas he started working on Woman I in 1950 and kept changing the image till he was ultimately satisfied in 1952. When you compare the final result with the in between phases, you can say that the end stage is indeed the strongest and that De Kooning's habit of analysing and changing is effective.
In 1953 the Woman I-VI series and the pastels were exhibited at the Sydney Janis gallery as paintings on the theme of women. In these paintings the staight brush strokes are dominant with much variaty in the use of colours. The expressive power and audacity of the series had a smashing impact. Specifically the much reproduced Woman I with her agressive look made De Kooning an international celebrity. In 1983 Two women (1955) was sold for $ 1.210.000, a record for a living and still productive artist. Today De Kooning's top works can do ten times as much.

Urban landscapes (1955-1963).                         Reproductions list 1955-1963

During 1955 De Koonings paintings became abstract again. Woman as a landscape is often mentioned as a intermediary painting, but you might as well say that the 1955 abstract paintings are derived from the way De Kooning handled his background in Woman I-VI. The paintings from 1955 and and 1956 are multicoloured. The ones made between 1957 and 1963 show a reduced colour palette, varying per painting, and broad lines, brought onto the canvas with big housepainting brushes. Grease on 8th avenue, Montauk highway and Suburb in Havana are for instance mostly using the colour combination blue, yellow and brown. They all have splash effects, suggesting that the paint was put on canvas with wild gestures. Some people spoke of such paintings as action painting, but in the case of the Kooning the action was slow and contemplative. Directly related to these paintings are the large black and white oil and enemal drawings on paper, that De Kooning made during his visit of Rome in 1959.
The abstract paintings from this period have been called urban landscapes, because many titles refer to urban places and infrastructures. In 1961 he made a less known second series of smaller woman paintings on paper. Because of his fame De Kooning felt less and less at ease in New York and started spending time on Long Island. In 1962 he himself designed a new large atelier, that was build in 1963 in East Hampton. In Pastorale and the majestic Rosy-fingered Dawn at Louse Point from 1963, two of the last works made in Manhattan, he's mainly using the colour combination pink, white and yellow. With these titles De Kooning is referring to the brightness of the countryside at sunrise.

Human figures (1964-1974).                              Reproductions list 1964-1974

In 1964 De Kooning moved permanently to his new atelier in East Hampton. Here he changed his style overnight. Gone were the large straight moves from the urban landscapes and new were the curly smaller light coloured brush strokes. In fact the straight lines would never return. Back was the human figure as subject, mostly women standing or sitting. With virtually no transition paintings, it looks as if De Kooning started anew. For the body of the figures De Kooning often used a flesh colourod mix of pink and beige.
He became more free in his way of finishing paintings. Apart from larger canvasses as The visit (1967, DW 124) and Two figures in a landscape (1967, SM2 35), also many smaller sketch like paintings on paper reached the market. He also started working on imprints of his paintings on newspaper and vellum.
From 1969 onwards, with for instance The sun, the sea, the wind (SM2 36), several abstract paintings were produced along with the figures. In this year De Kooning for the first time started working on bronze sculpture. In 1973-4 he took a break from painting and made some larger sculptures, after which he closed the sculpture cycle.

The North Atlantic light (1975-1980).                 Reproductions list 1975-1980

In 1975 De Kooning was painting again with new vigour, producing series of untitled abstract paintings. Stylistically they were a continuation upon the abstracts made between 1969 and 1972, multicoloured and with curly lines. He now choose for larger quadrangular canvasses as his standard format. Four titles refer to the vicinity of the sea in East Hampton, namely Whose name was writ in water ..., Water, soft banks and a window, Screams of children come from seagulls and The North Atlantic light. De Kooning's preference for light colours remained. He himself described the light curly strokes as watery.
1975-1977 were happy years, De Kooning felt like he was painting as if he couldn't miss. Between 1978 and 1980 he considered the series a finished cycle and painted little. The canvasses from these three years show him looking for new directions. By this time his drinking habit reached a maximum and people started fearing for his life. His wife Elaine, from whom he lived seperately since 1955, was willing to move in again on condition that he stopped using alcohol, which he did. In 1981 the couple was reunited.