Offset lithograph on wove paper
USA, 1979
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) – American/Dutch Abstract Expressionist artist
Signed in pencil lower right ‘de Kooning’
Numbered in pencil lower left ‘59/200’
Published by Paris Review, New York
Image dimensions: 23 x 29 1/8 in. (58.4 x 74 cm.)
Overall dimensions: 34 ½ x 41 in. (87.6 x 104 cm.)
Very good condition
Provenance: Hamilton Selway, California
Estimate $6,000-$8,000

Featuring the artist’s bold expressionist style, this print by Willem de Kooning combines appropriated imagery of the female body, text, and swaths of color. The work was created to support The Paris Review literary journal; beginning in 1964, publisher Drue Heinz initiated a program meant to encourage prints by inviting major contemporary artists to donate series of works, publicizing the journal and providing it financial support. In addition to de Kooning, other seminal artists who participated in this program include Andy Warhol, Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Robert Indiana.

Willem de Kooning (Dutch/American, 1904-1997)

As a young man, Willem de Kooning attended the Academie van Beelende Kunsten in Rotterdam while working at a commercial art and decorating firm. In 1926, he immigrated to the US and in 1927 he moved to New York, where he worked as a commercial artist. He quickly became involved with the New York avant-garde, spending time with John Graham, Arshile Gorky and Stuart Davis. These artists, including Miró, Arp, Picasso and Mondrian, influenced de Kooning’s early abstract work in the 1930s and 1940s where compositions of brightly colored biomorphic and geometric shapes and lines combined with architectural motifs. His simple, flat abstract design was a technique used throughout his prestigious career. He also frequently depicted the human body, women in particular. Already known as an influential artist, in the early 1970s, de Kooning experimented with sculpture, infusing his painted works’ energy into a three-dimensional stationary object. Today, Willem de Kooning’s work is known internationally and can be located in renowned art collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and the Tate Gallery in London.

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