<strong>Willem de Kooning</strong> is regarded as a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism and celebrated in the U.S. as one of the most significant figures... » 

Willem de Kooning is regarded as a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism and celebrated in the U.S. as one of the most significant figures in twentiethcentury painting. Yet in Europe the artist 19041997 has yet to be fully recognized as the important figure he was. That applies in particular to his work of the sixties and seventies his years of retreat from urban life to live and work on Long Island. This part of his oeuvre bears the imprint of a fundamental experience of landscape and it is here that he developed a style of figuration which de Kooning never really abandoned characterized by a new sense of color and energetic gesture. This period of vigorous pioneering creativity in the art of Willem de Kooning is explicitly illuminated for the first time in this book. Featuring a concentrated selection of painting in large formats it shows how his worksalthough recognizable as landscapesgrew abstract under the influence of his intense experience of nature while his brushwork literally liberated itself from all bonds. «