A leading artist among the Abstract Expressionists, Willem de Kooning never believed that abstraction and representation were mutually exclusive. As he stated: “I’m not interested in ‘abstracting’ or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it–drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea.” Woman and Bicycle, one of a series of…

Paintings from the late 1950s and on prove that de Kooning had sat at the feet of, and learnt much from, such old Italian masters as Titian and Tintoretto.

Untitled

Untitled XVIII

Willem de Kooning. Untitled III. 1982. Oil on canvas. 6' 8" x 70" (203.2 x 177.8 cm). Gift of UBS. 98.2002. © 2025 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Painting & Sculpture

PaulMcCartney.com