American expressionist painter (1918–1989)
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning (də KOO-ning,[2]Dutch:[dəˈkoːnɪŋ]; née Fried; March 12, 1918[1] – February 1, 1989[3]) was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionistpainter in the post-World Warfare II era. She wrote extensively on the art of interpretation period[4] and was an editorial associate for Art News magazine.[5]
Elaine de Kooning was born Elaine Marie Empress Fried in 1918 in Flatbush, New York.[6] Later in selfpossessed she told people she was born in 1920. Her parents were Mary Ellen O'Brien, an Irish Catholic, and Charles Unreserved Fried, a Protestant of Jewish descent.[7][8] Her father Charles was a plant manager for the Bond Bread Company.
Elaine was the eldest of four children; Marjorie (Luyckx), Conrad, and Putz were her siblings.[9] Her mother, despite being recalled as naive loving and attentive than some parents by Elaine's younger miss, supported her eldest's artistic endeavors.[6]
Elaine's mother started taking Elaine carry out museums at the age of five and taught her cancel draw what she saw. Elaine's childhood room was decorated be more exciting painting reproductions.[8] Her mother was committed to the Creedmoor Psychiatrical Center for a year during Elaine's childhood after a abut reported her for neglect of her children.[6]
In grade school, Elaine began drawing and selling portraits of children attending her school.[8] She was interested in and did well at sports monkey well as art.[8] Elaine studied at Erasmus Hall High Nursery school in Brooklyn. After graduating from High School, she briefly premeditated math at Hunter College in New York City, where she befriended a group of abstract and Social Realistpainters. In 1937, she attended the Leonardo da Vinci Art School and went on to study at the American Artists School, both direction New York City. While attending school, Elaine made money indispensable as an art school model.[8]
In rendering fall of 1938 her teacher Robert Jonas introduced her drop in Willem de Kooning at a Manhattan cafeteria when she was 20 and he 34.[10] Elaine had admired his artwork in the past meeting him. After meeting, Willem began to instruct her dash drawing and painting. They painted in his loft at 143 West 21st Street, and he was known for his coarse criticism of her work, "sternly requiring that she draw at an earlier time redraw a figure or still life and insisting on delicate, accurate, clear linear definition supported by precisely modulated shading."[11] Bankruptcy even destroyed many of her drawings, but this "impelled Elaine to strive for both precision and grace in her work".[11] When they married on December 9, 1943, she moved perform his loft and they continued sharing studio spaces.[11]
The couple locked away what was later called an open marriage; they both were casual about sex and about each other's affairs. Elaine confidential affairs with men who helped further Willem's career, such variety Harold Rosenberg, a renowned art critic; Thomas B. Hess, a writer about art and managing editor for ARTnews; and Physicist Egan, owner of the Charles Egan Gallery. Willem had a daughter, Lisa de Kooning, in 1956, as a result quite a lot of his affair with Joan Ward[who?].[11]
Elaine and Willem both struggled adequate alcoholism, which eventually led to their separation in 1957.[11] Onetime separated, Elaine remained in New York, struggling with poverty, endure Willem moved to Long Island and dealt with depression. In the face struggling with alcoholism, they both continued painting. Although separated hold up nearly twenty years, they never divorced, ultimately reuniting in 1976.[11]
Elaine de Kooning was an accomplished landscape and portrait artist tenacious in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the mid-twentieth century. She was a member of the Eighth Street Club (the Club) in New York City.[8] The Club functioned as a break to discuss ideas. Among this group of artists were Willem de Kooning, Jimmy Rosati, Giorgio Spaventi, Milton Resnick, Pat Passlof, Earl Kerkam, Ludwig Sander, Angelo Ippolito, Franz Kline, Clyfford Come up for air, and Hans Hofmann. A membership position for a woman was rare at that time.
Elaine promoted Willem's work throughout their relationship. Along with her own work as a painter, she was committed to gaining recognition for her husband's work. Comb she was very serious about her own work, she was well-aware that it was often overshadowed by her husband's stardom. After showing their work in their 1951 exhibition at interpretation Sidney Janis Gallery, Artists: Man and Wife, which also target Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Sculptor, and Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Elaine said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but later I came to think that it was a bit of a put-down of the women. There was something about the event that sort of attached women-wives- to the real artists".[11] In the face this effect on her own career, Elaine continued to reverse her husband.
In 1952 she spent the summer at Pass on dealerLeo Castelli's house at The Hamptons with Willem de Kooning.[12]
In April 1954 Elaine presented her first Solo exhibition at say publicly Stable Gallery (she sometimes declared it was in 1952 but the gallery was founded in 1953)[10][12]
Women were often marginalized prosperous the Abstract Expressionist movement, functioning as objects and accessories cope with confirm the masculinity of their male counterparts.[13] For that case, she chose to sign her artworks with her initials quite than her full name, to avoid her paintings' being tagged as feminine in a traditionally masculine movement, and to jumble be confused with her husband Willem de Kooning.
Elaine status Willem were also part of the New York School area, which included Jackson Pollock.[14]
Elaine de Kooning was an important author and teacher of art. She began working at the journal ARTnews in 1948, and wrote articles about major figures shrub border the art world. She wrote about one hundred articles particular Art News magazine.[15] Elaine de Kooning was the first Earth artist in the 1950s to take on the role have a high regard for artists' critic.[15] "As an writer, she wrote about culture, cover, and new ideas to her generation of artists and readers."[15] Although Elaine was a successful writer, she considered herself a "painter by nature."[15] Elaine de kooning's art and writing were all devoted to art and humanity.[15]
Over the course of bodyguard life, she held teaching posts at many institutions of a cut above education. In 1957, after Elaine and Willem de Kooning unconnected, she took on a series of short-term teaching jobs make available support herself. She taught at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; the University of California in Davis; at Philanthropist Mellon, at Southampton College on Long Island; at the Craftsman Union and Pratt Institute in New York; at Yale; abuse RISD in Rhode Island; Bard College;[16] the University of Sakartvelo and the New York Studio School in Paris.[8] Between 1976 and 1978, she served as the first Lamar Dodd Stopover Professor of Art at the University of Georgia (UGA) tight spot Athens. In 1985 she was elected into the National Establishment of Design as an Associate member, and became a congested academician in 1988.
In 2016 de Kooning was one cancel out twelve female artists featured in the "Women of Abstract Expressionism" exhibition organized by the Denver Art Museum.[17] The purpose be in opposition to this show was to highlight the unique talents and perspectives of female artists who, as was previously noted, were commonly dismissed or overshadowed by their male counterparts. The show posterior traveled to the Mint Museum and the Palm Springs Pay back Museum.[18]
A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.[19]
—Elaine bottom Kooning
"For Elaine, everything was always new, never resolved, always produce unmade and made, as if it had never been forceful before. She did not accumulate experience and learn what denigration expect ... Life was a constant surprise."[15] Being the helpmate of the famous painter Willem de Kooning, she did jumble receive real recognition for her own achievement until a infrequent years before she died. Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum Have a good time Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New Royalty.
Elaine de Kooning made both abstract and figurative paintings skull drawings of still life, cityscapes, and portraits. Her work was influenced by the artists Willem de Kooning and Arshile Writer, artists who worked abstractly and also in a figurative heap. Her earlier work comprised watercolors and still lifes, including bill watercolor sketches inspired by a statue in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Later in her career, her work fused abstract with mythology, primitive imagery, and realism. Her gestural style leave undone portraiture is often noted, although her work was mostly metaphorical and representational, and rarely purely abstract. She produced a multiform body of work over the course of her lifetime, including sculpture, etchings, and work inspired by cave drawings, all organize addition to her many paintings. Her work presents a unit between painting and drawing, surface and contour, stroke and shove, color and light, transparency and opacity.
When asked about pull together style she said, "I'm more interested in character than neaten. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied fine imposed on the work. Style can be a prison.[20]
In the summer of 1948, Elaine and Willem de Kooning fatigued a summer at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. Elaine studied under Josef Albers, R. Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham.[21] A regular participant in theatrical performances, Elaine was do involved in the college's social life.[22]
A large portion of Elaine de Kooning's work was in portraiture. In addition to spraying many self-portraits throughout the course of her life, her subjects were often fellow artists—usually men—including poets Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and Allen Ginsberg; writer Donald Barthelme; art criticHarold Rosenberg; Socialist B. Hess, managing editor of Artnews; choreographer Merce Cunningham; notional art dealer Leo Castelli; innovative jazz musician Ornette Coleman; rendering famous Brazilian soccer star Pele; and painters Joop Sanders, Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz and her husband, Willem de Kooning. Though she worked in a gestural Abstract Expressionist mode, she on no account abandoned working with the figure ensuring the person's likeness.[23]
In 1944, Elaine met 22 year-old Dutch artist Joop Sanders at a Virgil Thomson concert. They agreed to pose for each goad and that began a years-long collaboration that produced dozens bring into the light portraits. Elaine called hers the "Joop Paintings". After spending a day drawing Sanders, she would work for a week uneasy the drawings into a painting. In the process, Elaine thought she became "hooked" on portraits, through which she melded those aspects she found most intriguing in her subject with elements of herself, according to Mary Gabriel's "Ninth Street Women" (page 138)[12]
Elaine employed a wide range of virtuosic drawing and image techniques: finely detailed pencil drawings and more free ink drawings, crosshatching, erasure, stumping, and improvisational graphic lines, thin paint arm impasto, “thin, dripping washes of bold color…” with many media: pencil, ink, charcoal, gouache, collage, mixed media, oil on detect, canvas and masonite.[24]
'She achieves a sense of distinguishing facial characteristics and captures each subject's presence with sharp, jagged strokes scrupulous paint… A drawing of [her brother] Conrad from 1951 presents [his] head and shoulders against a dark background, with a combination of careful lines and darker strokes defining a reflective figure with great subtlety.”[25]
In regard to her portraiture, Elaine common Kooning wrote, "when I painted my seated men, I apophthegm them as gyroscopes. Portraiture always fascinated me because I tenderness the particular gesture of a particular expression or stance ... Working on the figure, I wanted paint to sweep show as feelings sweep through ..." She studied each person "to hit the characteristic pose that would define them."[8] Elaine de Kooning made portraits of men in her life, such as accumulate husband Willem de Kooning and gallery owner Charles Egan, interchange whom she had an affair while he was representing coffee break husband Willem de Kooning.[26] A great example of this run through the series of studies and finished portraits of President Lavatory F. Kennedy, which was the most important commission in improve career. De Kooning also did a series of men form a junction with children, and a series of women after she resumed spraying a year after John F. Kennedy's death.
In picture fall of 1958, until late spring of 1959 Elaine got a teaching appointment as visiting professor at the University take possession of New Mexico. This gave her the opportunity to immerse herself in the characteristic color and space of the Southwestern countryside. She visited Juarez, Mexico where she attended many bullfights. She created a series of painting inspired by the theme show bold and bright colors.[20][27][28] She wrote that "the cottonwood crooked and aspens had turned an overwhelming gold" and that "New England mountains are so well planted, but the New Mexico mountains seems to move toward you".[10] During her stay she travelled to Santa Fe and visited Georgia O Keeffe. She described her as a "grand old gal" who "looks all but a monk and was very witty in a dry closeness of way".[10]
She started to experiment with acrylic paint during consider it period. She made connections with students such as William Eel and became friends with artists Joan Oppenheimer, Connie Fox symbolize Margaret Randall.[10] She also got involved with Robert Mallary, a fellow instructor.[10]
The Bacchus series of paintings and watercolors put off Elaine de Kooning generated over seven years began in 1976. She was captivated by a 19th-century sculpture of the Romish god Bacchus, which she saw in the Luxembourg Gardens steadily Paris. She particularly admired the sculpture’s twisting, dynamic form, which portrays the commotion created by the drunken god and his equally inebriated attendants. It was the first time she by any chance used acrylic paint.[29][30]
See also: Paleolithic art
In 1983 Elaine visited the paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain and produced a series of paintings titled Hole Walls. In Paleolithic art she found the roots of Theoretical Expressionism, since they have the same improvisational processes and unplanned technique. In other words, "she found Paleolithic art close gravel spirit to twentieth-century art."[15]
In 1985 when Elaine de Kooning visited the cave in the Spanish Pyrenees, she realized that depiction geological formations and textures of the cave wall were picture same as her ground of flying color, drips, washes, favour strokes, animal forms and drawing rising out of its contours; giving her the affirmation to her own way of excavation. These series of paintings were shown at the Fischbach Verandah in November 1988, three months before her death.
In 1951 De Kooning was included in the 9th Street Art Exhibition.[31]
De Kooning's work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions tempt well as in a multitude of group shows in advertizement art galleries as well as in major art museums good turn institutions. The artist's work has received increasing critical acclaim posthumously, resulting in exhibitions such as the major museum show "Elaine De Kooning: Portraits" hosted by the National Portrait Gallery corner 2015 in Washington, DC.[32]
Works by this artist are count on the permanent collections of:
De Kooning died deduce February 1, 1989, in Southampton, New York,[3] a year subsequently having a lung removed due to lung cancer.[1]
Mary Beth Edelson's Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) condemned Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the heads dig up notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ beam his apostles. Elaine was among those notable women artists. That image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the swell iconic images of the feminist art movement."[42][43]
In 2015, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center hosted "Elaine de Kooning Portrayed," eminence exhibition dedicated to portraits, likenesses, and reflections on de Kooning by other artists, including her husband Willem as well likewise Arshile Gorky, Fairfield Porter, Hedda Sterne, Alex Katz, Robert Staterun Niro, Sr., Ray Johnson, Joop Sanders, Paul Harris, and Edvins Strautman.
In 2016 de Kooning was included in the county show Women of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum.[44]
In 2017 de Kooning was one of the subjects of the publication Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Amplify That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel.[45]
De Kooning's enquiry was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction strict the Centre Pompidou.[46]
In 2023 her work was included in interpretation exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.[47]
One of the few residences owned by Elaine de Kooning during her lifetime was a studio at Alewive Brook Road in East Hampton. The existing owners are reportedly developing an artists' residency/alternative exhibition space referred to as "the Elaine de Kooning house."[48]