Artwork App

Abstract painting with beige background, lines creating sharp angles, minimal color.

Without frame: 205.7 × 254.6 cm (81 × 100 1/4 in.)

Excavation

Willem de Kooning was a central figure in Abstract Expressionism, an art movement that espoused the painterly actions of the artist as a sign of his or her emotions. De Kooning completed Excavation in June 1950, just in time for it to be exhibited in the twenty-fifth Venice Biennale. His largest painting up to that date, the work exemplifies the Dutch-born innovator’s style, with its expressive brushwork and distinctive organization of space into sliding planes with open contours. According to the artist, the point of departure for the painting was an image of women working in a rice field in Bitter Rice, a 1949 Neorealist film by Italian director Giuseppe de Santis. The mobile structure of hooked calligraphic lines defines anatomical parts—bird and fish shapes, human noses, eyes, teeth, necks, and jaws—that seem to dance across the painted surface, revealing the particular tension between abstraction and figuration that is inherent in de Kooning’s work. Aptly titled, the painting reflects de Kooning’s technically masterful painting process: an intensive building up of the surface and scraping down of its paint layers, often for months, until the desired effect was achieved.

Credit Line

Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize Fund; purchased with funds provided by Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. Noah Goldowsky

Colors

Exhibition History

“XXV Biennale di Venezia,” June 8–October 15, 1950, cat. 82. New York, Museum of Modern Art, “Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America,” January 23–March 25, 1951, cat. by Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, cat. 54 (ill.). Art Institute of Chicago, “60th Annual American Exhibition,” October 25–December 16, 1951, n.pag., cat. 41. New York, Wildenstein and Company, “Loan Exhibition of Seventy XX Century American Paintings,” February 21–March 22, 1952, cat. 55. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, “New Accessions USA,” July 3–September 2, 1952, cat. 12 (ill.). “XXVII Biennale di Venezia,” June 19–October 17, 1954, cat. 64. Art Institute of Chicago, Two Centuries of American Art, 1750-1950, Oct. 1, 1959–Jan. 10, 1960, no cat. Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, “Willem de Kooning,” September 19–November 17, 1968, organized by the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, cat. by Thomas B. Hess; traveled to London, Tate Gallery, December 5, 1968–January 26, 1969, New York, Museum of Modern Art, March 6–April 27, 1969, Art Institute of Chicago, May 17–July 6, 1969, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 29–September 14, 1969, pp. 51, 73–75, cat. 46 (color ill.); Dutch cat., n.pag., cat. 43 (color ill.). Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, “Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments,” September 19–November 29, 1987, organized by Michael Auping, pp. 43, 45, 128, cat. 31 (color ill.). 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 (Washington, D. C. and New York only), pp. 20, 93, 100–02, 127, 136, cat. 21 (color ill.).