Artwork App

A work made of oil and enamel on paper, mounted on composition board.

Untitled

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.”

Credit Line

Gift from the Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection

Colors

Exhibition History

San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, “4th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,” November 25, 1950–January 1, 1951, n.pag. (ill.). Art Institute of Chicago, “27th Annual Society for Contemporary American Art Exhibition,” April 11–May 21, 1967, no cat. Chicago, Richard Gray Gallery, “Willem de Kooning: 1941–1959,” October 4–November 16, 1974, cat. 7 (ill.). David and Alfred Smart Gallery, University of Chicago, “Abstract Expressionism, A Tribute to Harold Rosenberg: Paintings and Drawings from Chicago Collections,” October 11–November 25, 1979, front cover (ill.), cat. 5 (ill.). Art Institute of Chicago, “Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection,” September 11–October 31, 1982, no cat. Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art, “Willem de Kooning: Paintings,” May 8–September 5, 1994, cat. by Marla Prather with essays by David Sylvester and Richard Shiff; traveled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 11, 1994–January 8, 1995, and London, Tate Gallery, February 15–May 7, 1995, p. 96, cat. 13 (color ill.).