Willem De Kooning :: Biographies

Willem De Kooning Willem De Kooning had been widely acknowledged as one of the greatestpainters of this light speed known for his intrepid originality. Severalexhibitions in the U.S. and abroad have celebrated the artisticachievements of this high-minded artists 60-year career. My essay covers partof his early sustenance with real focus on his late paintings. His last works,painted in the 1980s, as he was in deteriorating health have come undercriticism by many critics. Willem de Kooning was born on April 24, 1904 inRotterdam, the Netherlands. His father was a beer distri preciselyor and his beget ran a bar. At the age of twelve he became an apprentice at acommercial design and decorating firm. He studied for eight long time atRotterdams leading art school. In 1926, de Kooning secured a passage on astreamer to the United States, illegally entering and settling in NewJersey. He quickly moved to Manhattan, painted signs and worked as acarpenter in New York City. Then in 1935, he get a job with the WorksProgress Administration, a government bureau that put artists to workduring the Great Depression. By the next decade, he had achieve a place inthe downtown art scene among his fellow artists. By the late 1940s, de Kooning along with Arshile Gorky, JacksonPollock, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, began to be recognize as a majorpainter in a front man called Abstract Expressionism. This new school ofthought shifted the center of twentieth century art form Paris to New York.Willem de Kooning was recognized as the solely painter who had one foot inEurope and one in America. He combined classical European training inHolland with a love for popular American culture. The restlessness andenergy of American life was a source of great inspiration and passion forhim. Gary Garrells, the chief curator at the San Fransisco Museum of ModernArt said, He had the wildness of Pollock but mixed with the impeccablecraftsmanship of the European tradition. He was not interest in style, hewas interested in the process of looking and crafty and getting under theskin. Willem de Kooning, 93, was the last survivor of his famous peers.One would not have predicted for him a great old age. Among the leadingfigures of hard-living generation he belonged by temperament and talent toa romantic tradition of artists who burnt-out the physical and psychic fuel ofthemselves with devastating speed and completeness. Few of de Koonings contiguous friends and colleagues survived the harshness of the 1940s and