Willem de Kooning

Estate of the Artist
Matthew Marks Gallery/Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in October 1998

New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., de Kooning: New Paintings, 1984 -1985, October - November 1985, p. 31, illustrated in color
Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Paintings 1982 - 1986, January - February 1987
Houston, The Menil collects ion, Six Artists: John Chamberlain, Willem de Kooning, Yves Klein, Brice Marden, Jean Tinguely, Andy Warhol: In Celebration of the Fifth Year, May - September 1992
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Bonn, Städtisches Kunstmuseum; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen; New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, the 1980s, October 1995 - April 1997 (New York location only)

This painting is in excellent condition. Please refer to the department for a detailed condition report. This canvas is framed in a metal strip frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any stat.mes nt made by Replica Shoes 's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Untitled VI is the embodiment of the tranquility and confidence de Kooning possessed in the twilight of his sixty year career. De Kooning's long and fabled career and life were marked by bursts of creativity that produced cohesive and startling shifts in his aesthetic while remaining acutely his own. Whether one considers the black-and-white paintings of the late 1940s, the Women paintings of the 1950s or the lyrical abstracted landscapes of the 1970s, de Kooning's fluidity of stroke and gift of draftsmanship was a constant. The paintings of the mid-1980s marked just such a momentous change for de Kooning. Spending most of his t.mes in the calm of East Hampton, he began to paint with a new grace and fertility which he viewed from the perspective of a long career as a premiere artist. "I feel that I have found myself more, the sense that I have all my strength at my command. I think you can do miracles with what you have if you accept it ...I am more certain the way I use paint and the brush."  (Marla Prather, Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, 1994, p.199) This new balance and optimism gave way to an explosion of creative energy and vigor which culminated in a series of monumental Untitled compositions. These 1980's works, as seen in Untitled VI, are radically simplified and luminous anstractions, their compositions distilled into pure color and line. With their dancing rhythms and diaphanous lines, the series proved to be the ultimate realization and emancipation of de Kooning's artistic vision. Unrestrained yet deliberate, they dazzle with musical vitality. "In the 1980's works, the essential procedures and techniques were not changed but simplified, and the vocabulary of forms was retained but clarified." (Gary Garrels, 'Three Toads in the Garden: Line Color and Form' in Exh. Cat.,  San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, the 1980's, 1996, p.28)  These paintings boast an enlivened spirit and a new freedom in which the artist's innate gifts for line, color and form remain paramount.

           

Restricting his palette to primary colors, de Kooning's late compositions had a peaceful serenity to them, reflective of his moment in life. Gone were the baroque flourishes and loaded brushwork of the 1970s and in their place resided serene, ethereal spaces dominated by radiant expanses of white. He became interested in the absence of things, in the traces of what once was. It was as though he was putting down paint largely to take it away. Using his spatula in broad swiping gestures to strip paint from the canvas, the thin glossy impressions it left emphasized the residue the medium could provide and the importance of subtraction in the process of creation. Like the late cut-outs of Henri Matisse, de Kooning had a new focus on unadulterated colors and contour lines. The planes that float through the misty white canvas evoke the same refinement, buoyancy and liquidity as Matisse's The Flowing Hair.  In Untitled VI, we see the curvatures and floating silhouettes that could easily reference the female form or the rolling landscapes that permeate de Kooning's entire oeuvre, now further vaporized by de Kooning's pliant lines. With a parallel focus on sensual linearity and the simplification of form, the two artists demonstrate the similar tendency to reduce forms to their essence, to subtract until one is left with only the heart and bones.

 

Untitled VI still displays the unmistakable traces of de Kooning's remarkable touch and fluid wrist. The artist's use of line had been ascendant throughout his career and, though de Kooning now further reduced his compositions to a few whiplash swaths, his works maintain their traditional rhythmic character and aesthetic spirit. With simplicity evocative of Piet Mondrian's late canvases, de Kooning's sinuous strokes loop about in asymMetricas l formations with the elegance and grace that comes with age. He seems to move his lines around a central spine so that they unravel with an uncoiled elegance reminiscent of Matisse's flowing locks. While Untitled VI maintains the sustained energy and emotion of his earlier work, it encompasses the organic lyricism of Matisse as well as the dynamic equilibrium of Piet Mondrian. Like many paintings of the 1980s, it reinforces one of the most vital characteristics of the artist's oeuvre, his continual insistence on invention, freedom and risk.