(Rotterdam 1904 – 1997 New York) Untitled, 1960, with dedication signed de Kooning, oil, collage on cardboard, 33 x 43 cm, framed, (PP)

Provenance: Galleria d’Arte Niccoli, Parma
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibition: Modena, Action Painting, Arte Americana 1940 – 1970: Dal Disegno all’opera, Foro Boario, 21 November 2004-27 February 2005, exhibition catalogue page 136, no. 45 with ill. (Curator: Luca Massimo Barbero and Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice - label on the reverse)

In 1961 the art critic Robert Rosenblum wrote an article in the magazine ART-news which lauded “the abstract sublime”. […]
The “sublime” as an expression for the human experience of amazement and reverence in the face of awesome natural forces had occupied philosophers, poets and aesthetes of the late 18th century. Now, after the Second World War, after the breakdown of civilisation through Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, in a time in which the binding nature of aesthetic and ethical values was in doubt, American painters appeared to seize on this tradition and translate it into modern art. The enthusiasm of Rosenblum and others for this new artistic movement was clearly motivated by the wish to link in with European tradition. […] Towards the end of the 1950s, after working on the series Women, Willem de Kooning turned to landscape motifs – a turnabout accompanied by his return to radical abstraction. In 1954-55 he had already painted a picture with the title Woman as Landscape, linking together the two subjects women and landscape. “The pictures which I painted after Women,” remarked de Kooning in a conversation with David Sylvester in 1960, “are largely emotions.” In de Kooning’s works the concept of “landscape” takes on a personal meaning and only in a very mediated way does it have anything to do with what the eye really sees outside closed spaces. De Kooning sought rather to record his fleeting perceptions and feelings on the canvas in colour and atmospheric impressions. Unlike famous landscape painters of the 19th century, such as Monet or Constable, he did not paint en plein air, but after returning to his studio. Consequently, the colour spectrum of his palette brightened considerably. (Barbara Hess, Willem de Kooning, P. 51/52) In pictures like the present work from 1960 green, yellow, blue and pink tones, white and black predominate. Composed from just a few wide brushstrokes, the observer can alternately view the painting as an abstract or figural interpretation. “I am no rural type,” he explained to David Sylvester. “I am here and I like New York. But I do like to drive out in the car. I am keen on weekend trips, even if I go in the middle of the week. I am really crazy about driving along country roads and highways…[…] ”This passion can be sensed in this present work. On closer observation one could recognise a vehicle in the tangle of wide brushstrokes in the lower left; behind this features can be conjectured which have been optically distorted by the travelling speed, such as trees in wide green stripes, flowering bushes in the dark pink areas or a traffic sign in the black section.