Willem De Kooning

Mr. and Mrs. Bernard R. Reis, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
David McKee Gallery, New York
PaineWebber Group Inc., New York (acquired from the above in 1986)
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Barbara Mathes Gallery, De Kooning Works on Paper, October - December 1993
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts; Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Art; Boston, The Museum of Fine Arts; Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts; San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art; Miami, Miami Center for the Arts, Art Works: The Paine Webber Collection of Contemporary Masters, July 1995 - June 1997, no. 3, p. 8 (text reference in brochure for Houston)
London, Tate Modern, UBS Openings: Drawings from the UBS Art Collection, May - November 2007

Jack Flam, Donald Marron, and Monique Beudert, Jennifer Wells, The Paine Webber Art Collection, New York, 1995, p. 86, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition overall. The work is executed on a commercial paper used by the artist during this period, which has a gridded pattern on the reverse. There are tack holes at the corners and at intervals around the sides, dating from the time of execution. Under the current matte, there are wide margins with artist notations and measurements. The design and medium are all within the current matte window with the exception of the tips of two charcoal strokes at the top. There is a slight darkening of the edges overall that may be related to a previous matting, and there are two 1 in. vertical creases along the bottom edge located 5 ¾ and 7 ¼ in. from the left. These are all covered by the current matte. The paper is hinged to ragboard at three intervals along the top edge and is framed in a wood strip frame behind Plexiglas.
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.
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Willem de Kooning's Untitled, c. 1950, is a summation of de Kooning's genius for composition that possesses critical biographical references to the history of de Kooning's aesthetic practice of the previous decades, while simultaneously pointing toward the continuum of inventiveness and productivity in the decades that would follow.  Comprised of a complex abstract network, the drawing dynamically coalesces and emerges from the artist's deliberate rubs and manipulations within the drawn media. Accented by subtle touches of pink and blue pigment, the voluminous and virtuosic composition is only compressed by the limits of the sheets' periphery.  Untitled illustrates de Kooning's bold and challenging resistance to and testing of generic styles, thus proving that above all others, he was the great chameleon of the Abstract Expressionists with an agile facility to deftly navigate between figuration and pure abstraction. De Kooning's longstanding egression and regression to and from abstraction and figuration was observed by Thomas Hess at the time: "De Kooning keeps as many possibilities going at the same time as he can, each feeding each other, each in a sense inhabiting the other." (Thomas Hess as quoted in John Elderfield, "Space to Paint," in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: A Retrospective, New York, 2011, p. 13).

For de Kooning, there was little divide between drawing and paintings of this period.  As he explored the depths of his innovative style, he was known to sketch onto the canvas with charcoal before, during, and after the application of paint. Untitled, c. 1950 is a gesture toward his most enduring pictorial innovations: the hint of deep space suggested by form and contour and the effect of movement through sinewy, sensuous lines.  Therefore, drawings were not simply created whilst de Kooning was at a creative impasse; they were the critical arena for excising any demons that hindered the resolution of his paintings.

In 1948, de Kooning was given his first show at the Charles Egan Gallery, and the works that were shown approximately coincided with the execution of the present drawing, although "precision about the date and sequence of de Kooning's paintings through the 1940's is usually impossible; few are dated, and even the year of their composition may be uncertain...[due to] his habits of working on paintings sometimes for months, and of returning to some of them at a much later date." (John Elderfield, "Space to Paint," in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: A Retrospective, New York, 2011, p. 136).  Importantly, works from this period also won conciliatory favor under the oft critical pen of Clement Greenberg who reviewed the exhibition in The Nation, heralding de Kooning as an outright "abstract painter, a draftsman of the highest order." (Clement Greenberg, "Review of an Exhibition of Willem de Kooning," Nation, April 24, 1948, as reprinted in Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticisms, Volume 2, ed. John O'Brian, Chicago, 1986-1993, pp. 228-229).

The present work may owe its structural and chromatic origins to the magnificent Pink Angels, circa 1945, a painting whose surface is replete with oil and charcoal passages laden with evocative and sweeping forms; however, its dynamic compositional genesis is also suggested in Untitled, c. 1945, presently on view in the acclaimed de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  The parity that the aforementioned drawing possesses to the present work is incredibly symptomatic of the artist's work during this period. When de Kooning rendered drawings at this time, "he often adapted shapes used in one work to fit into another, refitting a figural shape to make it work with the abstraction, and vice-versa. In fact, he would often trace them from one work to another, thereby producing a recurrence at the same size." (John Elderfield, "Space to Paint," in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: A Retrospective, New York, 2011, p. 13).

The expressive furor of the spatial abstraction, the twisting planes and the power of soft sculptural contours that retain a potent physicality in Untitled, c. 1950 bear the same verve and muscular inventiveness that was implicit in de Kooning's genius for line and composition. Its coded labyrinth of charcoal and pastel engages and challenges the viewer as we wrestle within the depths of de Kooning's exploration with the seemingly antithetical notions of abstraction and figuration. In the end, however, perhaps we must simply settle upon de Kooning's own resignation on the matter, "Words and labels are very confusing. We need definitions. I'm not an Abstract Expressionist, but I express myself." (Irving Sandler, A Sweeper-Up After Artists, London, 2004, pp. 223-224).