Modern & Postwar Artists

Willem de Kooning

1904 - 1997

A first-generation Abstract Expressionist, Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

In 1950s New York, when painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline were moving away from representational imagery toward pure abstraction, de Kooning maintained a commitment to the figurative tradition, developing a signature style that fused vivid color and aggressive paint handling with deconstructed images of the female form—a then-controversial body of works that has become known as his “Women” paintings.