Willem

de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was one of the most prominent and celebrated of the Abstract Expressionist painters. His pictures typify the vigorous gestural style of the movement and he, perhaps, did more than any of his contemporaries to develop a radically abstract style of painting that fused Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism. Although he established his reputation with a series of entirely abstract works, he felt a strong pull towards traditional subjects and would eventually become most famous for his paintings of women, which he painted in spells throughout his life. Later he turned to landscapes, which were also highly acclaimed, and which he continued to paint even into his eighties, when his mind was significantly impaired by Alzheimer's disease.⁣ .⁣ De Kooning taught at the highly influential Black Mountain College for the summer of 1948, a time when summer sessions at the institution drew major names of the budding Abstract Expressionist movement.