Willem De Kooning

Estate of the Artist
Private Collection, New York
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
C&M Arts, New York
Private Collection, Tokyo
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada; Washington, D.C., Phillips Collection; Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts; St. Louis, Washington University Gallery of Art, De Kooning: Drawings/Sculptures, March 1974 - June 1975, cat. no. 151, fig. 69, n.p., illustrated (clay model) (edition no. unknown)
New York, Fourcade, Droll, Inc., De Kooning: New Works, Paintings and Sculptures, October - December 1975, cat. no. 26, n.p., illustrated and illustrated in the announcement (the present example) 
West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery of Art, De Kooning: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture 1967-1975, December 1975 - February 1976, cat. no. 30, p. 23, illustrated and illustrated in the exhibition brochure (the present example)
Austin, University of Texas, De Kooning: Lithographs, Sculpture and Painting, October - November 1976, cat. no. 8 (edition no. 2/7) 
Paris, Galerie Daniel Templon, Willem de Kooning: peintures et sculptures récentes, September - October 1977 (the present example)
New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., Twentieth Century Paintings and Sculpture: Brancusi to Lichtenstein, February - April 1978, n.p., illustrated (edition no. unknown)
New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., Large Scale, Small Scale, April - June 1978 (edition no. 7/7)
Düsseldorf, Stadtische Kunsthalle; Eindhoven, Van Abbemuseum; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, The Strange Nature of Money, October 1978 - September 1979 (edition no. unknown)
The Artist at Work in America, (travelling exhibition to Romania organized by the International Communications Agency), May - August 1979 (edition no. 4/7)
New York, Xavier Fourcade Inc., Willem de Kooning: Recent Paintings, October - November 1979 (edition no. unknown)
Seattle, Richard Hines Gallery, Willem de Kooning, January - February 1980 (edition no. 7/7)
Düsseldorf, Galerie Hans Strelow, Willem de Kooning: Gëmalde, Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, November - December 1980 (the present example)
New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., Willem de Kooning: the Complete Sculpture 1969-1981, May - June 1983 (edition no. AP 2/2)
Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Willem de Kooning: Skulpturen, September - October 1983, cat. no. 24, p. 80, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Fort Collins, Colorado State University, Willem de Kooning: Recent Works, March 1984, cat. no. 31, p. 9, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Goslar, Das Monchehaus-Museum, Exhibition on the occasion of the presentation of the Kaiser ring to Willem de Kooning, September 1984 (edition no. unknown)
New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, May - June 1996, cat. no. 25, p. 58, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Saint-Paul de Vence, Fondation Maeght, La Sculture des Peintres, July – October 1997, cat. no. 177, p. 239, illustrated in color (edition no. unknown)
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Panopticon: An Art Spectacular, October 2002 - September 2003, cat. no. 408 (edition no. 4/7)
Baden-Baden, Foundation Frieder Burda, Eröffnungsausstellung Sammlung Frieder Burda, October 2004 - February 2005 (edition no. AP 2/2)
Baden-Baden, Foundation Frieder Burda, Picture Change, February - June 2005 (edition no. AP 2/2)
Amsterdam, Temporary Stedelijk, Changing Views of the Collection, March - October 2010, p. 56, illustrated in color (edition no. unknown)

Jane Bell, "Willem de Kooning's New Work," Arts Magazine, November 1975, p. 80, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Carter Ratcliffe, "Willem de Kooning," Art International 19, December 1975, p. 18, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, De Kooning - New Works: Paintings and Sculpture, 1976, cat. no. 26, illustrated (edition no. 4/7)
Exh. Cat., Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 72^nd American Exhibition, 1976, cat. no. 6, not illustrated (edition no. 2/7)
Exh. Cat., Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum (and travelling), De Kooning: Sculpture and Lithographs, 1976, cat. no. B-25, illustrated (in Amsterdam), cat. no. SC 25, illustrated (in Geneva) and cat no. P25, not illustrated (in Duisburg) (edition no. 3/7)
Exh. Cat., Los Angeles, James Corcoran Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, 1976, cat. no. 25, not illustrated (edition no. 4/7)
Exh. Cat., East Hampton, Guild Hall, Artists and East Hampton: A 100 Year Perspective, 1976, listed (edition no. 5/7)
Exh. Cat., New York, Fourcade, Droll, Inc., De Kooning, New Paintings, 1976, not illustrated (edition no. 2/7)
Jan Juffermans, "Woede, haat en liefde in verwrongen figuren," De Nieuwe Linie, March 17, 1976, p. 9, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Houston, University of Texas, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, De Kooning: Recent Works, 1977, cat. no. 8, checklist, not illustrated (edition no. 2/7)
Exh. Cat., Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery (and travelling), The Sculptures of Willem de Kooning with Related Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs, 1977, cat. no. 25, n.p., illustrated (edition no. 3/7)
Exh. Cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Willem de Kooning in East Hampton, 1963 - 1977, 1978, cat. no. 97, p. 128, illustrated (edition no. AP 1/2)
Exh. Cat., Cedar Falls, University of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art (and travelling), De Kooning 1969-78, October 1978 - April 1979, cat. no. 39, p. 49, illustrated (edition no. 7/7)
Jack Cowart, "de Kooning Today," Art International, Summer 1979, p. 12, illustrated and p. 13 (text) (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, 1979, cat. no. 128, p. 145, illustrated (edition no. 4/7)
Matthew Kangas, "De Kooning," Argus, February 29, 1980, p. 6, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., New York, Pratt Manhattan Center Gallery, Pratt Institute (and travelling), Sculpture in the Seventies: The Figure, 1980, n.p., illustrated (edition no. 7/7)
K.V. Reinke, "De Kooning bie Strelow: Elan und Continuitat," Düsseldorf Handelsblatt, December 4, 1980, p. 23, illustrated (the present example)
Exh. Cat., East Hampton, Guild Hall Museum, Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951-1981, 1981, cat. no. 73, not illustrated (edition no. AP 1/2)
Exh. Cat., Akron, Akron Art Museum, The Image in American Painting, 1950-1980, 1981, pl. 2, p. 19, illustrated in color (edition no. 6/7)
Exh. Cat., Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum (and travelling), Willem de Kooning, The North Atlantic Light 1960-1983, 1983, cat. no. 73, p. 113, illustrated (edition no. 3/7)
Harry F. Gaugh, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1983, fig. 92, p. 101, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art (and travelling), Willem de Kooning, 1983, fig. 280, p. 264, illustrated (in New York), p. 268, illustrated (in Berlin) and p. 167, illustrated (in Paris) (edition no. 7/7)
Exh. Cat., London, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, Willem de Kooning Paintings and Sculpture 1971-1983, 1984, cat. no. 21, n.p., illustrated in color (edition no. 2/7)
Joop M. Joosten, 20 Years of Art Collecting, Acquisitions Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 1963-1984, Painting and Sculpture, Amsterdam, 1984, no. 445, p. 102, illustrated in color and p. 232, illustrated (edition no. 3/7)
Philippe Sollers, De Kooning, Vite II (Oeuvres), Paris, 1988, pl. 81, illustrated in color (edition no. unknown)
Diane Waldman, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1988, fig. 95, p. 123, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., New York, Matthew Marks Gallery; New York, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Willem de Kooning: Drawings and Sculpture, 1998, cat. no. 67, p. 117, illustrated (edition no. 7/7)
Exh. Cat., Monaco, Grimaldi Forum, New York New York: Fifty Years of Art, Architecture, Cinema, Performance, Photography and Video, 2006, cat. no. 5, p. 71, illustrated in color (edition no. AP 2/2) 
A.L. Dunningpon, "An Art Spectacular," Antiques and the Arts Weekly, January 10, 2007, p. 71 (edition no. unknown)
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2007, p. 559 (text)
Exh. Cat., Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda, Sculpture by Painters, 2008, p. 197, illustrated in color (edition no. AP 2/2)
Jenna Curry, “Autumn's Appetite,” Art & Antiques, November 2009, p. 34, illustrated in color (edition no. 6/7)
“Sotheby’s Sale to offer Property from the Collection of Mary and Louis Meyers”, Antiques & the Arts Weekly, November 6, 2009, p. 25, illustrated (edition no. 6/7)
Exh. Cat., Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda, There’s something about these pictures…: insights into the collection of Frieder Burda, 2010, p. 56, illustrated in color (edition no. AP 2/2)
Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: A Retrospective, 2011, cat. no. 164, p. 416, illustrated in color (another example)
Holland Cotter, “Unfurling a life of creative exuberance,” New York Times, September 16, 2011, p. C28, illustrated in color (another example)
Jerry Saltz, "Definitive at MoMA, the Full, Amazing, Ever-evolving, Never-retreating Story of Willem de Kooning," New York Magazine, September 26, 2011, pp. 74-75, illustrated in color (another example)
Aix-en-Provence, Les Musée Granet, “Chefs-d’ouevre du Musée Frieder Burda, 2012, no. 21, p. 89, illustrated in color (edition no. AP 2/2)

This sculpture is in excellent condition. It displays a dark brown uniform patina that is slightly burnished a lighter color from rubbing on a central protrusion between the head and the torso. The sculpture is structurally sound with no physical damage evident on the surface.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Willem de Kooning’s groundbreaking contributions to Abstract Expressionism, the most storied artistic movement of the mid-Twentieth Century, chronicle a tireless exploration of the possibilities for figuration within a resolutely abstract genre. Throughout his truly prodigious career, de Kooning epitomized the tenets of “Action Painting,” as coined by Harold Rosenberg in a 1952 analysis of the innovative stylistic approach of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, by involving his entire being, wholly and unreservedly, in the creation of his art. This impulse for kinetic touch is perfectly captured and memorialized in his sculptural oeuvre, which beautifully complements his painted corpus by translating the gestural sweeps of his pigment into three-dimensional form. In works such as Large Torso, one of the ultimate expressions of de Kooning’s sculpted aesthetic, the viewer can detect his entire being in traces of physical contact left as clear evidence of his corporeal involvement with his medium. The extraordinary works that developed from this intimate engagement comprise a major artistic enterprise and rival his painted masterworks in originality and scope. In the words of William Tucker, "De Kooning is the latest and ... the last of the series of great painters whose occasional work in three dimensions has enriched and even transformed the sculpture of the modern period." (Exh. Cat., New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Willem de Kooning Sculpture, 1996, p. 45)

In 1969, while vacationing in Rome, de Kooning was invited by his friend Herzl Emanuel to visit his newly acquired bronze foundry in Trastevere. While at the foundry, the artist began to experiment with the discarded clay he found around him, creating a series of thirteen small sculptures. After his return to New York, de Kooning had each of these works cast in bronze in editions of six, and sent them to his dealer, Xavier Fourcade. When Henry Moore came across the thirteen sculptures in Fourcade’s gallery, he conveyed his admiration through the dealer, and encouraged that they be rendered on a more ambitious scale. De Kooning did indeed embark on a dedicated five-year period of large-scale sculptural investigation and advancement.

Large Torso dates from 1974, the last year that de Kooning pursued sculpture, and thus represents the absolute apex of a critical period of artistic growth in his career. Along with the full-figured Clamdigger and Hostess, the present work is one of the grandest figurative sculptures created by the artist; in their Pulitzer Prize winning biography of de Kooning, Marc Stevens and Annalyn Swan single out this work, saying, “Large Torso…implicitly celebrated change, mutation, and the possibilities of the shaping hand.”  (Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2004, p. 559) The surface of the present work reads like a map of its own creation, its topography seeming to chart every point of contact between artist and sculpture: grooves and hollows where de Kooning's fingertips dug into the soft clay, smooth areas where his thumb rubbed a trough or raised a crest, and even craters left by the impact of a rolling pin. Starting from the armature supporting the soft flesh of the sculpture, de Kooning added fistful after fistful of clay, slowly transforming its amorphous form into the completed work. He constructed the figure’s visage and the outsized hands with a pronounced downward pull so as to imbue Large Torso with a weighty presence. As Andrew Forge has argued, and as is made manifest in the present work, “There can hardly ever have been sculptures made in which the engagement with the material is more rawly exposed. And one cannot escape the feeling that somehow the work starts with this engagement, starts with it and ends with it too. In other words, the gestures, the rolling, pinching, gouging, flinging actions that one is continually reading as one moves around each piece are not agitations of the surface of the piece but rather the crests of violent actions that go to its very center.” (Andrew Forge, “de Kooning’s Sculpture,” Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 37)

Total engagement with the material – with the substance in his hands – is the most striking feature of de Kooning's aesthetic soul. When painting, he does not constrict the paint to his will; instead the pigment flows and swirls across the canvas, as he breathes life into his medium rather than imprisoning it. The faithfulness to the nature of his material extends to his sculptures, where he plays with the primal heaviness as well as pliable softness of the clay becoming illusory in the final bronze cast. Despite his foremost status as a master of Abstract Expressionism, de Kooning never abandoned the figure in his oeuvre, defiantly retaining a crucial vestige of the Western Art tradition of his youth and student days in Northern Europe. The expressive human character of Large Torso is a tribute to classical busts while it bursts beyond the constrictions of that past paradigm to embrace the full modernity of its historic moment.  One of the last and most accomplished sculptures that de Kooning made, Large Torso stands at the extraordinary climax of an adventure that was as brilliant as it was brief, the perfect extension of the artist's painting into the solidity of a third dimension.