Willem De Kooning

Emily B. Staempfli, New York
Sotheby's, New York, November 18, 1992, Lot 88 (consigned by the estate of the above)
Waddington Galleries, London
Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above in 2001)
Christie's, New York, November 13, 2008, Lot 146
Acquired by the present owner from the above 

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Willem de Kooning, October - November 1972, cat. no. 6, illustrated
Beverly Hills, Salander O'Reilly, Willem de Kooning, Important Paintings and Works on Paper, January - February 1991, no. 4

Wielcy Malarze, Willem de Kooning, Poland, 1998, p. 24, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. All turning edges of the canvas are wrapped with tape, some of which is lifting due to the age of the adhesive. Overall the edges of the paper exhibit wear and small tears, primarily on the left and right edges and at the upper left, as well as a few scattered creases or tears within the design, all of which were most likely stabilized in the process of mounting the work to canvas. Under ultraviolet light, these areas are retouched, primarily in the white and pink pigment areas. Under ultraviolet light examination, the following can be noted: - A small number of repaired vertical tears along the upper edge, located 10 – 15¾" from the left and extending down from the top in varying lengths from 1" to 3". - in the lower 20" section of the painting there are several areas of retouching, some of which are linear and associated with creases or tears in the paper, located 11-22" in from the left and 10-15" up from the bottom. - larger areas of retouching primarily located 10-20" from the bottom and 9-11½" in from the left. - a cluster of four retouches (two linear and two small spots) located 5-7" from the right and 25-27" from the bottom. - a 1" spot of retouching in the upper left quadrant that is slightly lifted. Scattered across the surface are a number of brown accretions, the majority of which appear to be tiny specks of studio matter with others varying from ¼ - 1½" in diameter and located in the lower half of the painting. These are likely associated with materials in the studio at the time of execution. The unpainted bottom edge of the sheet is slightly discolored. The canvas is framed in a wood frame painted black with a small float.
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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A resoundingly personal work that beams with emotional sentiment and radiates de Kooning’s reflective contemplation at the start of the 1970s, Two Figures in Devon richly captures the atmospheric serenity of its eponymous seaside environs of Devon, Long Island. De Kooning's slippery forms oscillate between figuration and abstraction: shapes both composed and agitated, receding in and out of their backgrounds with as much inventiveness as his brilliant color palette and lush range of brushwork. If the smokestack greys and cool industrial blues of Woman I recall the matrix of the city, Two Figures in Devon’s fleshy pinks, aquamarine blues and sunkissed golds arouse a warm blissful repose on the shore. In contrast to the more agitated works of the 1950s, the superstructure of the females in landscapes of the 1960s and early 1970s is not as overt; whiplash line is replaced by large areas of freely brushed color. A strong sense of bright sunlight permeates the palette, and the brushstrokes are more languid and liquid. In the present work, De Kooning negates gravity to achieve the painting’s irresistible transcendence. Speaking to critic Harold Rosenberg in 1971—the same year as the present work—de Kooning described the light in Long Island that drove the renewed vigor of his painting at this moment: “When the light hits the ocean there is a kind of a grey light on the water… Indescribable tones, almost. I started working with them and insisted that they would give me the kind of light I wanted… I got into painting in the atmosphere I wanted to be in. It was like the reflection of light. I reflected upon the reflections on the water, like the fishermen do.” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: A Retrospective, 2011, p. 352) 

In so obscuring the representational source of inspiration for Two Figures in Devon, de Kooning not only investigated a distortion of the figure, but he compellingly stripped the image to its bare essentials of color and form. The present work is a testament to de Kooning’s career-long ability to negotiate the boundaries between figure and ground, abstraction and representation, while celebrating the fluidity of oil paint that allowed his forms to seemingly dematerialize within light and color. Ultimately, in composition, surface and lush color, Two Figures in Devon declares once again that de Kooning's art is at its best when transmuting the tactile pleasures of the female form and verdant landscape within the embrace of the visceral plasticity of paint. Despite its gestural expressionism, the lush swooping of brilliant tones and delineated spaces evoke a distinct anthropomorphism, archetypal of the painter’s formal investigation into the abstraction of figures in landscape. Blues and greens thrash sumptuously in the background, conjuring the land and sea, while fleshy pinks and reds surge to the foreground. Here we witness a further abstraction of de Kooning’s Women: the artist’s explicit depiction of figural bodies, as clarified by the title, exudes a sexuality reminiscent of other modern masterpieces such as Pablo Picasso's Cubist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's La Clownesse assise (1896). Like Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec before him, de Kooning's flattened abstraction of the human form had as much to do with modernist pictorial space as with the arousing subject matter in the way oil paint suggested flesh.

The explicit celebration of place in the Long Island paintings of the 1960s and 1970s conjures the seaside with its impressionistic, fluid appearance. Emotionally, de Kooning felt a close kinship with the fields and dunes which reminded him of his native Netherlands, signaling a more contemplative yet sensual period in his work that his friend, the critic Thomas B. Hess, also attributed to a corresponding alteration in the artist's perspective. Vital colleagues such as Pollock, Gorky, and Kline had passed from the scene and "the social glue which had bound the New York art world closely together some twenty years began to dissolve. ...The idea of privacy suddenly became as important as the exercise of dialogue. As men become older, the issue narrows into the one of life and death, where private, rather than public ideas are important." (Thomas B. Hess, de Kooning, Recent Paintings, New York, 1967, p. 13)