A free and lively gesture

Willem de Kooning occupies a special place in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Dated 1971, this work displays the strength and spontaneity characteristic of the artist’s period of consecration.

Signed Willem de Kooning, this painting has been held in a collection in northern France since its acquisition on December 6, 2012, during a sale by Maison Pierre Bergé at the Palais Iéna in Paris. It had previously passed through the Van Landerhove gallery in Ghent. For Willem de Kooning, the 1970s were the years of recognition and success. After arriving in the United States in 1926, he made his way as an artist and finally settled on Long Island in 1961, following his meeting with dealer Leo Castelli, who lived in East Hampton. The following year, he finally obtained American citizenship. Following a retrospective of his work in 1968, which toured from Amsterdam to Los Angeles, via London and New York, he saw his paintings reach record auction sales, particularly those in his “Women” series, and even became the world’s most expensive contemporary artist in the 2000s. He continued his pictorial explorations, driven by violent gestures and dense, vibrant materials. Although the artist did not claim to belong to any particular artistic movement, he is now considered one of the precursors of abstract expressionism. Nevertheless, his paintings always oscillate between figuration and abstraction, as in this 1971 oil painting in which a human figure emerges. After the 1960s, when his brushstrokes became more fluid and organic, the following decade saw the emergence of brighter, more open works. Shapes seem to emerge from the movement of the brush, in intertwined lines and masses of color. The use of newspaper as a support added to the notion of immediacy. De Kooning plays with paper and writing, letting them appear on the surface, while always working very quickly. Primacy is given to the gesture rather than the result. Didn’t the painter say : “I’ve never been interested in how to make a good painting… but in seeing how far painting could go.” So this work emanates chaos, illustrating the work of an artist always on the move and in search.