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Lot Essay
"For de Kooning, the urge is to include everything, to give nothing up, even if it means working in a turmoil of contradictions…a turmoil of contradictions is his favorite medium." (T.B. Hess, De Kooning: Recent Paintings, 1972, p. 20)
"It has become obvious over the years that the human figure is the real center of his art… The sculpture helps us to see this… Differentiations of contour and texture, and potentials for action, dominate. Space takes on the scale of the body itself." (Andrew Forge, "De Kooning's Sculpture," Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 37)
Willem de Kooning's Seated Woman is a rare and important work from a small group of thirteen sculptures that the artist produced while living in Spoleto, Italy during the summer of 1969. In Seated Woman, one feels the power of de Kooning's hand writ large, as every crease and indentation that resulted from his working process is amplified. The result displays the same visceral, fleshy sense of the figure as that of de Kooning's best Woman paintings. Grace Glueck reviewed one of the first exhibitions of the sculptures in 1972, writing, "Seldom has 3-D work so faithfully mirrored that on canvas–his two nearly life-size bronzes of a man and a woman, with their gnarled, turbulent surfaces full of movement, could have been plucked from the artist's paintings and dipped in metal" (G. Glueck, quoted in "Previews: Exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery," Art in America, vol. 60, September-October 1972, p. 121). Seated Woman stands as an astonishing example of work by one of the true giants of 20th century art, and represents his unrivalled combination of unrestrained imagination, ingenuity and superb technical competency.
Initially de Kooning had reservations about using such wet clay, but those soon evaporated when he saw what he was able to achieve. “In some ways, clay is even better than oil,” de Kooning told Craft Horizons magazine in 1972. “You can work and work on a painting but you can’t start over again with the canvas like it was before you put that first stroke down. And sometimes, in the end, it’s not good, no matter what you do. But with clay, I cover it with a wet cloth and come back to it the next morning and if I don’t like what I did, or I changed my mind, I can break it down and start over. It’s always fresh” (W. de Kooning, quoted by M. Stevens & A. Swan, de Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2003, p. 544). De Kooning relished working in clay as it allowed him the freedom to cease work on an individual sculpture, cover it with a damp cloth, and come back to it again. The technique was similar to the way that de Kooning would cover his thickly-pigmented canvases with newspaper to prevent them from drying so that he could work and re-work the image until it satisfied him. He employed this technique extensively in the Woman paintings, and he applies the same process to Seated Woman. The process was slow and laborious. De Kooning worked on the clay figures every day during the summer of 1969, and then would take a leisurely walk through the streets of Rome. In the same way as his paintings, de Kooning’s sculptures were the result of a visceral creative process which tapped into the same instinctual–almost primitive–expressionistic forces that produced some of the artist’s greatest works.
De Kooning often worked with his eyes closed, as if conjuring the figure magically from the raw material; he was also working on a series of ‘blind drawings’ at this time. He seemingly pulled the figure from the clay itself, seeking to convey a sense of the figure rather than a direct copying from nature. This technique allowed him to develop a direct, almost intuitive relationship with his work, as if he was working on an extension of his own body. As Claire Stoulling notes, “Like Mondrian, who was deeply fascinated by dance, de Kooning is absorbed by the experience of confronting his own body, as if he were face to face with another whom he tries to manipulate visually and tactilely, limb for limb, body for body, in order to guarantee the organic quality of the sculptures. (C. Stoulling, “The Sculptures of Willem de Kooning,” Willem de Kooning, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1983, p. 241).
By the end of de Kooning's Italian holiday, thirteen sculptures were selected for casting and sent to New York after de Kooning had returned home. The sculptor Henry Moore, who was in New York at that time for an exhibition of his work, suggested that de Kooning consider enlarging the work to monumental scale. Seated Woman was the first sculpture that de Kooning made in collaboration with the Modern Art Foundry in Queens, New York; in 1980, the work was cast in two sizes–a mid-size (equal to those made at the Modern Art Foundry) and a new, monumental scale–in collaboration with the Tallix Foundry in Peekskill, New York.
As William Tucker wrote, "De Kooning is the latest and I suppose the last of the series of great painters whose occasional work in three dimensions has enriched and even transformed the sculpture of the modern period. As with Daumier, Degas, and Picasso, de Kooning's talent is essentially linear: the figure imaged in painting calls out for its embodiment in sculpture" (W. Tucker, quoted in Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 45). Seated Woman, an honorable figure cast in bronze, radiates a palpable sense of self-possessed power and presence that goes well beyond its physical frame. Across every inch of its body, de Kooning’s sculpture displays the entire process of its creation. Evidence of the artist’s hand shines in the dramatic gestures that carve out the gouges and gorges of clay that constitute this elegant form.
"It has become obvious over the years that the human figure is the real center of his art… The sculpture helps us to see this… Differentiations of contour and texture, and potentials for action, dominate. Space takes on the scale of the body itself." (Andrew Forge, "De Kooning's Sculpture," Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 37)
Willem de Kooning's Seated Woman is a rare and important work from a small group of thirteen sculptures that the artist produced while living in Spoleto, Italy during the summer of 1969. In Seated Woman, one feels the power of de Kooning's hand writ large, as every crease and indentation that resulted from his working process is amplified. The result displays the same visceral, fleshy sense of the figure as that of de Kooning's best Woman paintings. Grace Glueck reviewed one of the first exhibitions of the sculptures in 1972, writing, "Seldom has 3-D work so faithfully mirrored that on canvas–his two nearly life-size bronzes of a man and a woman, with their gnarled, turbulent surfaces full of movement, could have been plucked from the artist's paintings and dipped in metal" (G. Glueck, quoted in "Previews: Exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery," Art in America, vol. 60, September-October 1972, p. 121). Seated Woman stands as an astonishing example of work by one of the true giants of 20th century art, and represents his unrivalled combination of unrestrained imagination, ingenuity and superb technical competency.
Initially de Kooning had reservations about using such wet clay, but those soon evaporated when he saw what he was able to achieve. “In some ways, clay is even better than oil,” de Kooning told Craft Horizons magazine in 1972. “You can work and work on a painting but you can’t start over again with the canvas like it was before you put that first stroke down. And sometimes, in the end, it’s not good, no matter what you do. But with clay, I cover it with a wet cloth and come back to it the next morning and if I don’t like what I did, or I changed my mind, I can break it down and start over. It’s always fresh” (W. de Kooning, quoted by M. Stevens & A. Swan, de Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2003, p. 544). De Kooning relished working in clay as it allowed him the freedom to cease work on an individual sculpture, cover it with a damp cloth, and come back to it again. The technique was similar to the way that de Kooning would cover his thickly-pigmented canvases with newspaper to prevent them from drying so that he could work and re-work the image until it satisfied him. He employed this technique extensively in the Woman paintings, and he applies the same process to Seated Woman. The process was slow and laborious. De Kooning worked on the clay figures every day during the summer of 1969, and then would take a leisurely walk through the streets of Rome. In the same way as his paintings, de Kooning’s sculptures were the result of a visceral creative process which tapped into the same instinctual–almost primitive–expressionistic forces that produced some of the artist’s greatest works.
De Kooning often worked with his eyes closed, as if conjuring the figure magically from the raw material; he was also working on a series of ‘blind drawings’ at this time. He seemingly pulled the figure from the clay itself, seeking to convey a sense of the figure rather than a direct copying from nature. This technique allowed him to develop a direct, almost intuitive relationship with his work, as if he was working on an extension of his own body. As Claire Stoulling notes, “Like Mondrian, who was deeply fascinated by dance, de Kooning is absorbed by the experience of confronting his own body, as if he were face to face with another whom he tries to manipulate visually and tactilely, limb for limb, body for body, in order to guarantee the organic quality of the sculptures. (C. Stoulling, “The Sculptures of Willem de Kooning,” Willem de Kooning, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1983, p. 241).
By the end of de Kooning's Italian holiday, thirteen sculptures were selected for casting and sent to New York after de Kooning had returned home. The sculptor Henry Moore, who was in New York at that time for an exhibition of his work, suggested that de Kooning consider enlarging the work to monumental scale. Seated Woman was the first sculpture that de Kooning made in collaboration with the Modern Art Foundry in Queens, New York; in 1980, the work was cast in two sizes–a mid-size (equal to those made at the Modern Art Foundry) and a new, monumental scale–in collaboration with the Tallix Foundry in Peekskill, New York.
As William Tucker wrote, "De Kooning is the latest and I suppose the last of the series of great painters whose occasional work in three dimensions has enriched and even transformed the sculpture of the modern period. As with Daumier, Degas, and Picasso, de Kooning's talent is essentially linear: the figure imaged in painting calls out for its embodiment in sculpture" (W. Tucker, quoted in Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 45). Seated Woman, an honorable figure cast in bronze, radiates a palpable sense of self-possessed power and presence that goes well beyond its physical frame. Across every inch of its body, de Kooning’s sculpture displays the entire process of its creation. Evidence of the artist’s hand shines in the dramatic gestures that carve out the gouges and gorges of clay that constitute this elegant form.