Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) is generally considered to be one of the great painters of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Rotterdam (NL) where he studied art, he emigrated to New York in 1926. In the forties together with others such as Pollock he created a movement in art which became known as American Abstract Expressionism. In the fifties he started painting again in a figurative style showing crude images of big women which shocked many of his admirers and marked him as a traitor to the abstract movement. He later painted grandiose semi-abstract landscape images in vivid resonant colours. The vividness and brilliant management of his work kept him in the forefront of American art well into his old age.
This catalogue accompaines an retrospective exhibition which is being held at the KunstHal in his birth place of Rotterdam.