THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PRESENTS MAJOR EXHIBITION EXPLORING THE LATE WORK OF WILLEM DE KOONING
Last Chance to View Touring Exhibition, The First
to Focus on the Artist's Paintings from the 1980s
EXHIBITION
Willem De Kooning: The Late Paintings, The 1980s
DATES
January 26April 29, 1997
ORGANIZATION Organized by
Garry Garrels, Elise S. Haas Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and
Sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in cooperation with the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. It is coordinated for and installed at The
Museum of Modern Art by Robert Storr, Curator, Department of Painting and
Sculpture. Mr. Storr also contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue
(see below).
CONTENT The paintings made during the 1980s by
American artist Willem de Kooning (b.1904), one of the great painters of
this century, constitute a major and largely unknown chapter in his 60
year
career. With the exception of a relatively small number of works that were
shown in galleries and museums during the past fifteen years, few of the
paintings of the artist's final period have been seen by the public.
Willem De Kooning: The Late Paintings, The 1980s, which finishes its
international tour at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, provides the
first opportunity to study in depth the artist's last decade of work. "Of
these works, a significant number count among the most remarkable paintings
by anyone active in the 1980s and among the most distinctive, graceful, and
mysterious de Kooning himself ever made," writes Robert Storr in the
exhibition catalogue.
The exhibition contains some forty paintings made
by the artist between 1981 and 1987 selected from more than 300 canvases
from public and private collections. The variously ethereal, animated, and
richly hued works demonstrate a striking formal and emotional range.
Enlivened by sinuous, flowing strokes in radiant primary reds, yellows, and
blues, augmented by subtle whites and strong blacks, and startling greens,
oranges, and violets, the paintings reverberate with fragmentary references
to the sexually charged figuration, landscape spaces, and the biomorphic
forms of his great Abstract Expressionist canvases of the 1940s, 50s, and
60s.
One of the founders of that movement, de Kooning, in his art, was
widely thought to have personified its anguished aggression and painterly
bravado. Throughout his career, however, he refused to be typecast,
shifting his ground back and forth from classic draftsmanship to daredevil
improvisation and from ferocious attacks on the human form to the most
lyrical evocations of light and nature. Firmly believing, as he said, that
"I have to change to stay the same," de Kooning radically redirected his
work one last time beginning in 1980 at the age of 75. Working at an ever
accelerating pace until his powers failed in 1990, the artist turned away
from the tumult of his previous paintings to limn canvases of a wholly
unexpected and unprecedented ease and luminosity. "As the heavy oleaginous
currents and skimping riptides of colors of the late 1970s paintings
stilled and receded," writes Mr. Storr, "the sheer hues and spare structure
of his new work emerged—light, sharp-focused, and assured."
PUBLICATION Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, The
1980s, copublished by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, is the first scholarly publication on De
Kooning's last decade of work. The fully-illustrated 144
page catalogue
contains essays by Gary Garrels and Robert Storr. Clothbound, $50.00,
distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., New York, and
paperbound $29.95, are both available in The MoMA Book Store.
TRAVEL The exhibition completes an international tour with its
MoMA showing. It opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (October
3, 1995January 7, 1996) and traveled to the Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis (February 3May 8, 1996), Städtisches Kunstmuseum,
Bonn (June 14August 11, 1996), and Museum Boymans
Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam (September 9November 25, 1996).
For further
information, contact Alexandra Partow, Assistant Director of
Communications, 212/708
9756.
