Willem de Kooning “Untitled 1958” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in Italy

Painting - Pastel and Charcoal on Paper (57 x 77.5 cm) 1958

Willem de Kooning was born on April 24, 1904, in Rotterdam.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled From 1916 to 1925 while working as an apprentice decorator, he attended evening classes at the “Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen” in Rotterdam.

In 1926 he moved to the United States and began working as a building painter.

He then lived in New York, where he met John Graham and Arshile Gorky and Stuart Davis.

Until 1935-1936 he did small art jobs before being employed in the WPA Federal Art Project.

Then he was able to devote himself to his full-time art.

During these years, he was mainly influenced by the Cubism and Surrealism of Pablo Picasso and Arshile Gorky, with whom he shared a workshop.

He was one of the American movement leaders, “Abstract Expressionism” with Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell.

In 1938 Willem de Kooning began his series of “Women”, a theme that became recurring in his artistic work.

The canvas exhibited in the museum Peggy Guggenheim, painted in 1958, shows a landscape filled with light and colour.

He died on 19 March 1997 in East Hampton, Long Island, United States.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled