De Kooning a Retrospective
De Kooning: A Retrospective is the Museum of Modern Art’s catalogue for its 2011 survey of Willem de Kooning’s career, edited by John Elderfield.
Elderfield edited the book and wrote its text, with further contributions from Jim Coddington, Jennifer Field, Delphine Huisinga and Susan Lake. A Choice review quoted on the D.A.P. page describes short essays on nine phases of his career. Each phase ends with a chronology and a study of the materials and methods of one canvas. D.A.P. lists the hardcover as a September 2011 publication with 504 pages and 725 color illustrations, and reports that it won the 2011 PROSE Award for Art History and Criticism.
De Kooning was born in Rotterdam in 1904 and settled in New York in 1927. In 1936 he worked in the mural division of the WPA and then took up painting full time. He became part of the New York School with Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko. His first one-man exhibition was at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1948. In 1953 he exhibited his “Women” paintings, and the Museum of Modern Art bought Woman I. The de Kooning Foundation says he moved to Springs, on Long Island, in 1963 and settled there permanently in 1971.
