Rijksmuseum retrospective traces de Kooning’s shift from discipline to rebellion
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is marking 100 years since Willem de Kooning stowed away to New York with a major retrospective of his work. The exhibition shows how his rigorous academic training in drawing shaped his later rebellion against artistic conventions, making the tension between discipline and freedom central to his art.
The show combines key paintings with drawings, tracing de Kooning’s path from painstakingly precise studies to works that merge drawing and painting. A teenage charcoal still life reportedly took 600 hours to complete; later, works such as *Excavation* (1950) transform tangled shapes into faces and bodies. De Kooning, who worked as a sign painter and illustrator after emigrating at 22, did not have a solo exhibition until he was nearly 44.
- Rijksmuseum retrospective traces de Kooning’s artistic transformation.
- His academic drawing training informed his later experimentation.
- A teenage still life took an estimated 600 hours.
New here? Start with this
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American painter whose work became central to twentieth-century modern art, though he was relatively unknown until his forties. His paintings combined energetic, expressive brushwork with references to the human figure, an approach that defied the artistic rules of his time.
De Kooning emigrated from the Netherlands to New York in 1926 at age 22, initially supporting himself as a sign painter and commercial illustrator. He had received thorough training in academic drawing techniques as a youth, skills that would later become the foundation for his radically unconventional artistic practice.
His career shows how mastery of traditional discipline eventually led to artistic freedom and innovation, a shift that proved important to modern art's development. Understanding this journey helps explain why his work remains significant in how we think about creativity today.
Art Culture Entertainment Music
Read the full article at the source →
Originally published by The Guardian as “Willem de Kooning review – the artist’s lifelong rebellion against himself is thrilling to watch”.