Willem de Kooning
Mnuchin Gallery is proud to announce De Kooning: Five Decades. This will be the gallery’s eleventh de Kooning exhibition and its most ambitious in scope. The exhibition highlights key moments from every decade of de Kooning’s mature career, underscoring the tireless experimentation and stylistic reinvention that defined his oeuvre. The presentation begins with a group of seminal Women drawings from the late 1940s and early ’50s and goes on to trace his oscillation between figuration and abstraction, woman and landscape, from 1947 through 1983, demonstrating his mastery across painting, drawing, and sculpture. De Kooning: Five Decades will be on view April 19 through June 15, 2019 and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue authored by Pepe Karmel.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Photography by Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.
Willem de Kooning
Untitled (Three Figures)
1947
oil, enamel paints, graphite, and charcoal on paper
20 3/4 x 24 inches (52.7 x 61 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Red Torso
circa 1948-49
oil on paper
18 x 23 1/4 inches (45.7 x 59.1 cm)
Private Collection, Courtesy of Michael N. Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC
Willem de Kooning
Two Women IV
1952
graphite, colored chalks, charcoal, and gouache on paper
16 1/2 x 20 1/4 inches (41.9 x 51.4 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Woman
1952
pastel and graphite on paper
24 1/4 x 16 1/8 inches (61.6 x 41 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Woman Seated and Standing
1952
pastel and charcoal on paper
21 3/8 x 24 3/8 inches (54.3 x 61.9 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Woman III
1952-53
oil on canvas
68 x 48 1/2 inches (172.7 x 123.2 cm)
Private collection
Willem de Kooning
Two Women
1953
oil on paper mounted on canvas
21 7/8 x 28 1/2 inches (55.6 x 72.4 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Woman
1953
oil, enamel paints, and charcoal on paper mounted on canvas
29 1/8 x 21 1/2 inches (74 x 54.5 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Woman
1953
charcoal on paper
36 x 23 5/8 inches (91.4 x 60 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Monumental Woman
1954
charcoal on paper
28 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches (71.8 x 57.2 cm)
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland
Willem de Kooning
Two Women
1964
oil on vellum mounted on canvas
61 x 37 inches (154.94 x 93.98 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Woman as Landscape
1954-55
oil and charcoal on canvas
65 1/2 x 49 3/8 inches (166.4 x 125.4 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Composition
1955
oil, enamel, and charcoal on canvas
79 1/8 x 69 1/8 inches (201 x 175.6 cm)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Willem de Kooning
Police Gazette
1955
oil, enamel, and charcoal on canvas
43 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches (109.9 x 127.6 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Sagamore
1955
oil, enamel and charcoal on paper mounted on board
22 1/2 x 28 inches (57.2 x 71.1 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled #4
1956-58
pastel on paper
22 1/2 x 21 inches (57.1 x 53.4 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Pastorale
1963
oil on canvas
70 x 80 inches (177.8 x 203.2 cm)
Private Collection
WIllem de Kooning
Woman and Child
1967
oil on paper mounted on canvas
52 1/2 x 47 5/8 inches (133.4 x 121 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Clamdigger
1972
bronze
59 1/2 x 29 5/8 x 23 3/4 inches (151.1 x 75.2 x 60.3 cm)
Private Collection, Courtesy of McClain Gallery
Willem de Kooning
Cross-Legged Figure
1972
bronze
24 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 16 inches (62.2 x 45.1 x 40.6 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Hostess
1973
bronze
49 x 37 x 29 inches (124.5 x 94 x 73.7 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled XVI
1975
oil on canvas
70 x 80 inches (177.8 x 203.2 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled
circa 1975-79
oil on canvas
69 7/8 x 80 inches (177.5 x 203.2 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled
1977
oil on canvas
88 x 76 3/4 inches (223.5 x 194.9 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled X
1977
oil on canvas
59 1/4 x 55 inches (150.5 x 139.7 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled VI
1981
oil on canvas
77 x 88 inches (195.6 x 223.5 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled III
1983
oil on canvas
88 x 77 inches (223.5 x 195.6 cm)
Private Collection
Willem de Kooning
Untitled XLII
1983
oil on canvas
80 x 70 inches (203.2 x 177.8 cm)
Private Collection
By: Tom McGlynn
It’s been 22 years since Willem de Kooning’s death at 93. His long and prodigiously productive career was lately most fully examined in a retrospective held between 2011–12 at MoMA. He may be, at this point, one of the most examined artists of the 20th century. Fortunately, his work has, for the most part, withstood the historic “seating” that such scrutiny might instruct. The artist’s own phrase for the visual capture of life’s vital yet elusive moments, “slipping glimpses,” can be applied to the intransigent present his work perpetually announces.
Willem de Kooning was one of the Abstract Expressionists who, along with Jackson Pollack, wrestled the art crown from Paris following World War II and brought it to New York. This exhibit traces the full arc of his career from the 40s to the 80s as only the Mnuchin Gallery, with its unparalleled De Kooning resources, can provide.
Colorful, ebullient, the depth and quality of work on display from this major figure in Modern Art could scarcely be topped by any museum in the world.
By: Stephen Ellis
When he was in the mood, Willem de Kooning had a gift for titles both memorable and unconfining. Gotham News, Suburb in Havana, and (my favorite) Rosy-Fingered Dawn at Louse Point provide catchy handles for images as elusive as they are beautiful. Alas, he wasn’t always in the mood; he stuck Composition (1955)—one of the most glorious of all Abstract Expressionist paintings—with one of his least imaginative titles. It is on loan from the Guggenheim for the smartly curated small retrospective at the Mnuchin Gallery’s graceful 1914 townhouse.
By: James Panero
A clash of the titans rages on the Upper East Side. Now at Mnuchin Gallery, “De Kooning: Five Decades” continues the titanomachy of the twentieth-century art gods—and the mortal women who loved them.
By: Paul Laster
Although New York’s major art museums—The Met, MoMA, Guggenheim and Whitney—charge adults a $25 admission fee, exhibitions at the city’s hundreds of art galleries can be accessed free of charge. Nevertheless, it’s not often that galleries meet museum standards for scholarly exhibitions with in-depth investigations into an artist’s body of work and major loans from private and institutional collections to support it, but when they do it can be an enlightening experience.
Rounding up a selection of exceptional exhibitions at Upper East Side and Chelsea galleries, we take you on a timely tour of museum-quality shows that definitely deliver the goods.
By: Allan Schwartzman
To the rescue: the glorious de Kooning exhibition currently on view at Mnuchin Gallery (“De Kooning: Five Decades”, 19 April-15 June). Precisely and lovingly selected, the exhibition spans the 50 years of the artist’s maturity, with drawings, paintings on paper and canvases that exemplify some of the greatest achievements in Modern art, when there were battles worth waging, and painting was painting.
Every work, every section and every mark is bursting with exhilaration and brilliance. The curatorial taste of this exhibition also shows the amazing range of palette that made de Kooning one of the most daring colorists of the 20th century.
By Andrew Russeth
Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve missed certain artists until you’re face-to-face with their work again. That was my realization in visiting the Mnuchin Gallery’s masterpiece-filled Willem de Kooning survey the other day. It’s been seven long years since the remarkable de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It’s good to have him back for a bit.
