About this artwork
Willem de Kooning established his reputation as a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement with a series of black-and-white paintings that he created in the late 1940s using household enamels and paper. With their lyrical brushwork and biometric shapes, these works marked the artist’s shift from a representational or figurative drawing style to the new gestural tendencies of the New York School. Once he eliminated color from his palette, de Kooning became more spontaneous with his application of paint, pushing his compositions to the edge of the paper. The resulting works embodied the physical act of painting, a defining characteristic of what would later become termed “action painting.”
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Status
- On View, Gallery 291
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Department
- Contemporary Art
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Artist
- Willem de Kooning
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Title
- Untitled
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1948–1949
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Medium
- Oil and enamel on paper, mounted on composition board
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Inscriptions
- Not inscribed on recto; inscribed: verso: "de Kooning" (upper left in black crayon)
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Credit Line
- Gift from the Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection
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Reference Number
- 1981.260
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Copyright
- © 2018 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York