Art World Giant De Kooning Dies

Willem de Kooning, the abstract expressionist considered by many the world’s greatest living artist, died Wednesday at the age of 92.

He died in his studio on New York’s Long Island where he had continued to paint until recent years despite being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Along with Jackson Pollock who died in 1956, de Kooning was considered the greatest of the abstract expressionists because he not only remained true to that post-World-War-II discipline but continually pushed it in new directions. He was prolific and built a huge body of work over five decades, which became the genre’s prime example of its trademark spontaneity and action painting. He also introduced monumental scale to contemporary art.

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on April 24, 1904. His father Leendert was a wine and beer distributor who won custody of young Willem when his parents separated about five years after his birth.

At the age of 12, de Kooning entered an informal apprenticeship with commercial artists and designers along with night courses at the Rotterdam Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten en Wettenschappen, where he studied academic art and crafts.

By 1926, the youth decided he belonged in America.

After several unsuccessful attempts, de Kooning sailed to Boston in 1927 as a stowaway. In the United States, he worked for many years doing lettering, sign painting and carpentry.

De Kooning became an artist in his own right in 1935 when he was employed to do murals for the Federal Arts Project. In that year he also did his first easel painting.

His first independent commission was for part of a mural for the New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940.

One of de Kooning’s first portraits was of his art student, Elaine Fried, whom he married in 1943.

Among his honors were Holland’s Order of Orange-Nassau, awarded to him on his 75th birthday, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. In 1982 his “Two Women” was sold by the art auction house Christie’s for $1.2 million, the highest price paid to that date for a work by a living American artist. In 1987, his “Pink Lady” topped that by selling for $3.63 million. In 1989, his “Interchange” was sold by Sotheby’s for $20.68 million, the highest price paid for any contemporary work.