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Willem De Kooning: Drawing Seeing/Seeing Drawing

Drawing Center; Klaus Kertess; Willem De Kooning; N.Y.) Drawing Center (New York

Synopsis:
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) created several series of drawings over his long career as a pioneer of post-war abstraction, and yet despite his renown as a painter and draftsman, there have been no publications to look at selected groups of his drawings in depth. No other artist of his generation produced drawings so regularly or so superbly, and this book presents four of de Kooning's drawing series -- affording a closer view of both the artist's working process and his constant reinvention of mark-making. The earliest series to be included, Folded Shirt on Laundry Paper, 1958, lays bare a panoply of mark-making possibilities with brush and ink. The second series consists of twenty-four drawings from 1966 which the artist created with eyes closed. Several charcoal drawings of the Crucifixion, a subject unique for de Kooning, comprise the third series. A fourth series, almost never seen, consists of tracings made on large sheets of vellum, rendered startlingly completely the artist's subsequent improvisations upon them.

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