Willem De Kooning

De Kooning’s canvases are energetic and restless — built up and scraped back, layered with marks that are simultaneously visceral and sensuous. Unlike many of his peers he never entirely abandoned the figure, and his celebrated Women series of the early 1950s remains among the most debated bodies of work in postwar art.

Printmaking did not occupy a central role in de Kooning’s practice. His first essay into lithography was in 1960 at the University of California at Berkeley, and his second in 1967 with a single lithograph contributed to Portfolio 9 at Hollanders Workshop. It was the relaxed and warm atmosphere of Hollanders that lured him back to the medium in 1970. Lithographic stones were taken to his studio at East Hampton — but, in Fred Genis’s words, “he hated it.” Aluminium plates followed with no greater affinity. Finally Genis and Hollander offered him transfer paper, which he could spread on the floor and work on as he did with drawing and painting. It proved the solution.

From June 1970 to June 1971 he produced twenty-four lithographs at Hollanders — eighteen by transfer method, two drawn directly onto aluminium plate, and four drawn directly onto stone, including the monumental Stanton Street and With Love.

De Kooning died in East Hampton in 1997 at the age of 92.