• critical theory
  • paper boards with dust jacket
  • offset-printed
  • sewn bound
  • black-and-white & color
  • 24 x 16 cm.
  • 730 pp.
  • edition size unknown
  • unsigned and unnumbered
  • ISBN 1400041759

De Kooning : An American Master

Willem de Kooning, Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan

description

"The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took hs place as the charismatic leader of the New York school - just as American art began to dominate the international scene. Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie stars on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the fame figure - and his nights living on the edges, drinking, womanizing, and talk at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank O'Hara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into an Alheimers-like dementia, he created a vast body of hauntrying and ethereal late work. This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master." -- from interior flap. With 70 illustrations, and 16 full-page illustrations in color. Includes notes and index.

New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf,
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