Willem de Kooning

Woman, for de Kooning, is the human equivalent of water; more than a vessel, she embodies it in planes of rippling flesh.

-- Thomas Hess in Harry Gaugh’s De Kooning, 1982

In 1950, de Kooning began Woman I and embarked on a series of paintings and drawings devoted exclusively to exploring the abstracted figure of woman.  After returning to abstract paintings during the mid and late 50s, de Kooning would refocus on the figure in 1963 when he moved from New York City to Southampton.  During this period, de Kooning experimented with varying levels of image abstraction and morphology.  The sunlight, dunes, bright blue water and deep green landscapes of Long Island increasingly informed de Kooning’s representation of the female form.  Working somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and figurative imagery, de Kooning’s body of work caused a sensation that has not abated to this day. 

Though highly abstracted and gestural, the figurative element in Nude maintains a powerful presence even as she appears to be swallowed by the turbulent, watery background.  The lush tapestry of yellow and blue swirls in an undulating mass of intoxicating color.  The woman’s head – her mass of yellow hair, luscious red lips and creamy white skin – is wonderfully clear and well articulated.  The rest of the figure’s body is lost in the obscurity of a finely worked orchestration of energetic brushwork.  Acknowledging the ambiguity of his work, de Kooning said: “That’s what fascinates me – to make something that you will never be sure of, and no one else will.  You will never know, and no one else will ever know…That’s the way art is.” (interview with Thomas Hess cited in Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Willem de Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculptures, 1983, p. 23)