Willem de Kooning - Untitled XX

Willem de Kooning (De Kooning 1904–1997), a Dutch-born American artist, was the most representative figure of Abstract Expressionism in the United States during the 1950s. Early on dedicated to abstract painting, by 1946 he presented strong internal imagery influenced by Surrealist automatism, particularly demonstrating power in his Woman series. His work later became a pioneer of Action Painting. His style resembles the Cobra movement of 1950s Northern Europe; among American Abstract Expressionists, de Kooning’s work possesses the most majestic momentum. From the 1970s onward, de Kooning gradually dismantled past abstract forms (from the Women series of the 1950s to landscape imagery of the 1960s), moving toward purer abstraction. In this work, stable structure elevates imagery through color and texture itself.