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Lot Essay
De Kooning's success in the late 1950s-early 1960s allowed him to leave the confines of New York City for East Hampton, where he moved in 1963. The artist's work was dramatically affected by this transition, which afforded him a new concept of space and light. Thomas Hess compared de Kooning's Women of the 1950s and 60s in his essay for the Knoedler exhibition of 1967 and noted:
"De Kooning's Women of the 1950s were very much a part of the city. They usually sat in the artist's studio...The light was that particular New York glare which is half artificial, even on the balmiest days, and bleached still further by the whitewashed walls of the loft. And her "background," to use an old-fashioned word, was also drawn from the city...When he moved to the country, for the first time he began to fill the abstract space of Woman with plein air light" (op. cit., pp. 21-23).
"De Kooning's Women of the 1950s were very much a part of the city. They usually sat in the artist's studio...The light was that particular New York glare which is half artificial, even on the balmiest days, and bleached still further by the whitewashed walls of the loft. And her "background," to use an old-fashioned word, was also drawn from the city...When he moved to the country, for the first time he began to fill the abstract space of Woman with plein air light" (op. cit., pp. 21-23).