Lot Essay
De Kooning had been painting images of women since 1947, and in 1950 he embarked upon Woman I (coll. The Museum of Modern Art, New York), his most monumental expression of this theme. It was not completed until two years later, and in fact, De Kooning had even abandoned it for a time, about eighteen months after beginning it. His friends noted that the picture had been painted over repeatedly and photographs taken at six different stages of its evolution attest to the radical reworking that this image underwent. The artist would alternately break down his subject into a myriad of jagged, sliver-like shapes, and then flatten out and simplify his forms. He would occasionally apply tracing paper to certain areas and paint over it, to test new ideas; when pulled away, this would leave encrustations of paint around the edges.
Woman I was finally completed in 1952, and along with five other versions of this subject, it was exhibited at De Kooning's third one-man show at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, in March, 1953. Viewers were shocked at the ferocity of the image and much was made of the artist's alleged misogyny. Many abstract artists condemned De Kooning's blatant return to the figure.
The present drawing is one of numerous studies De Kooning executed in charcoal, pencil or pastel during this period. They reveal the lengths to which the artist worked in order to grasp and define the structure of this overwhelming subject. Indeed, the layered, fractured look of the Woman series owes much to drawing with the brush, and the image is the accumulation of innumerable gestures of the hand and wrist, some broadly expansive, others nervously confined.
This structure is most readily grasped in the related drawings. The artist juxtaposes open forms with heavily reinforced contours and shaded areas. The effect is at once flat and sculptural, and recalls an equally signal and ground-breaking work in the evolution of twentieth century painting, Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon (coll. The Museum of Modern Art, New York), a picture which also treats the image of woman in a violent and shocking manner.
Woman I was finally completed in 1952, and along with five other versions of this subject, it was exhibited at De Kooning's third one-man show at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, in March, 1953. Viewers were shocked at the ferocity of the image and much was made of the artist's alleged misogyny. Many abstract artists condemned De Kooning's blatant return to the figure.
The present drawing is one of numerous studies De Kooning executed in charcoal, pencil or pastel during this period. They reveal the lengths to which the artist worked in order to grasp and define the structure of this overwhelming subject. Indeed, the layered, fractured look of the Woman series owes much to drawing with the brush, and the image is the accumulation of innumerable gestures of the hand and wrist, some broadly expansive, others nervously confined.
This structure is most readily grasped in the related drawings. The artist juxtaposes open forms with heavily reinforced contours and shaded areas. The effect is at once flat and sculptural, and recalls an equally signal and ground-breaking work in the evolution of twentieth century painting, Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon (coll. The Museum of Modern Art, New York), a picture which also treats the image of woman in a violent and shocking manner.