Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. In the period after the Second World War, de Kooning painted in the style of abstract expressionism or action painting. He worked as part of the New York school, in which Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and other artists also worked.

During his early period, Willem de Kooning began to paint with bold colors and elegant lines, but later turned to more figurative works that combined by abstraction. After 1940, he increasingly identified with the abstract expressionism movement.
A characteristic of the painter’s style was the emphasis on the complex ambiguities of the figures on the canvas. Background figures in the artist’s paintings overlap other figures, making it seem as if they are pushing their way into the foreground, only to be obscured again by dripping brushstrokes into the background of the painting.

His late period is characterized by paintings with clean and almost graphic motifs, which at the same time return to the biomorphic lines of the painter’s earlier works.

In November 2006, Steven A. Cohen bought Woman III for $137.5 million, making it the second most expensive painting of all time. p>