Willem de Kooning (1904–97) was a Dutch-American artist and leading figure of Abstract Expressionism. He got his start early, taking night classes at the Academy of Visual Arts in Rotterdam from the age of 12, and also working during that time as an apprentice for a commercial art and decorating firm. He came to the United States as a stowaway in 1926, and landed in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he worked briefly as a house painter before moving to New York City. De Kooning’s abstract and figurative work during the 1930s was influenced by the Cubism and Surrealism of Pablo Picasso and also by Arshille Gorky, with whom he shared a studio. In 1935, he joined the mural and easel divisions of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project and for the first time in his adult life was able to devote himself to creative work full-time. 

During the 1940s de Kooning participated in group shows with other members of the informal group of artists known as the New York School, and by the 1950s he was recognized as one of the leaders of Abstract Expressionism. His first solo exhibition, which featured black and white enamel compositions, was mounted at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1948, and in 1951 he received the Logan Medal and Purchase Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago for his monumental abstraction, Excavation (1950). Between 1948 and 1951, de Kooning taught at Black Mountain College and the Yale School of Art. Then, in 1953, approximately 20 of de Kooning’s paintings, pastels, and drawings of women were shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery in the exhibition Willem de Kooning: Paintings on the Theme of the Woman. The works integrated figuration with abstraction, and when The Museum of Modern Art acquired Woman I (1950–52), its collection committee stated, “The Committee found the picture quite frightening, but felt that it had intense vitality and liked the quality of the color.” In the latter half of the 1950s, de Kooning created abstract urban landscapes, parkways, and rural landscapes. A new group of Women arrived in the 1960s. De Kooning executed his first sculptures—figures modeled in clay and later cast in bronze—in 1969, and in 1970–71 he began a series of life-size figures. In later decades, his art softened, reflecting the light and landscape of East Hampton, New York, his adopted home.

De Kooning’s work is held in major public collections across the world, and he has been the subject of exhibitions and retrospectives at institutions that include The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York (1968–69, traveled; 1971–72; 1997, traveled; 2011–12); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (1974, traveled); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands (1976, traveled; 1983, traveled); the International Communication Agency of the U.S. Government and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (1977–79, traveled); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York (1978); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York (1983–84, traveled); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York (1989); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1993–95, traveled); Tate Gallery, London, England (1994, traveled); National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1994–95, traveled); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Walker Art Center (1995–97, traveled); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, (2001); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, (2002–03, traveled); Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2005–06); and the Bridgestone Museum of Art, Ishibashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan (2014–15). 

De Kooning has been featured in several exhibitions at GRAY, including 1941–1959, 1974; Late Paintings and Drawings, 1980; The New Paintings, 1987; Modern and Contemporary Masters, 1992; Forty Years, 2003; Paintings from the Forties and Fifties, 2004; Threat and Degradation, 2011; Muse Exploring Inspiration, 2012; Fun House, 2013; and GRAY at 60, 2023.