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Lot Essay
1963 was pivotal year for Willem de Kooning as he permanently relocated from his New York City loft to East Hampton, Long Island. There, his works exploded with color and freshness, reflecting a new concept of space and light inspired by his new natural surroundings. Executed four years after the artist's move to the suburbs, the thick and lively brushstrokes of Snake Charmer reflect this profound shift in de Kooning's style.
"I try to free myself from the notion of top and bottom, left and right, from realism! Everything should float. When I go down to the water's edge on my daily bicycle ride I see the clam diggers bending over, up to their ankles in the surf, their shadows quite unreal, as if floating...The whole secret is to free yourself of gravity!" (Willem de Kooning quoted in M. Prather, Willem de Kooning Paintings, exh. cat. Washington, D.C., 1994, p. 174).
A consummate draughtsman and colorist, de Kooning consistently broke the traditional barriers between drawing and painting to explore ambiguities between the figure and its background within his compositions. In Snake Charmer, the abstracted figure, a strategic grouping of spontaneous cream, yellow, orange and blue strokes articulated by black and brown lines, floats near the center of the composition. "Whatever I see becomes my shapes and my condition," de Kooning once said, reflecting on how his gestural painterly responses translated his perception into almost visceral expressions and rhythms on a human scale (W. de Kooning, quoted in D. Waldman, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1988, p.1). De Kooning can never be considered a purely abstract painter: the forms and shapes of his paintings-- manifestations of the motion of his own body-- always articulate hints or glimpses of the physical structure and material core of the natural world.
"I try to free myself from the notion of top and bottom, left and right, from realism! Everything should float. When I go down to the water's edge on my daily bicycle ride I see the clam diggers bending over, up to their ankles in the surf, their shadows quite unreal, as if floating...The whole secret is to free yourself of gravity!" (Willem de Kooning quoted in M. Prather, Willem de Kooning Paintings, exh. cat. Washington, D.C., 1994, p. 174).
A consummate draughtsman and colorist, de Kooning consistently broke the traditional barriers between drawing and painting to explore ambiguities between the figure and its background within his compositions. In Snake Charmer, the abstracted figure, a strategic grouping of spontaneous cream, yellow, orange and blue strokes articulated by black and brown lines, floats near the center of the composition. "Whatever I see becomes my shapes and my condition," de Kooning once said, reflecting on how his gestural painterly responses translated his perception into almost visceral expressions and rhythms on a human scale (W. de Kooning, quoted in D. Waldman, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1988, p.1). De Kooning can never be considered a purely abstract painter: the forms and shapes of his paintings-- manifestations of the motion of his own body-- always articulate hints or glimpses of the physical structure and material core of the natural world.