Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1904, trained there in the commercial arts, emigrated to the United States in 1926, and died in East Hampton, New York, in 1997. A central figure in the mid-century New York School, he developed an abstract painting style marked by thick, heavily worked surfaces and vigorous brushwork, returned to figuration in 1953 with his flattened depictions of women, and later concentrated on abstracted landscapes and, in the 1980s, open ribbonlike forms. The Museum of Modern Art mounted de Kooning: A Retrospective, with nearly 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints; SFMOMA also holds his work.