Major Willem de Kooning show to open during 60th Venice Biennale- The Director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice Giulio Manieri Elia has announced that a major exhibition devoted to Willem de Kooning, among the most groundbreaking and influential artists of the 20th century, will open on 16th April 2024 to coincide with the launch of the 60th International Art Biennale.
The exhibition will be the first to explore the impact of de Kooning’s two stays in Italy, in 1959 and 1969, on his work. The art he created in Italy and the influence of Italy on his subsequent paintings, drawings and sculpture in America have never before been thoroughly explored. The lasting effect of these two creative periods will be revealed in an outstanding selection of works, ranging from the late 1950s through the 1980s.
The exhibition is presented in collaboration with The Willem de Kooning Foundation, an artist-endowed, private operating foundation fostering the study and appreciation of Willem de Kooning’s life and work through research, exhibitions and educational programs.
The exhibition’s curators are Gary Garrels and Mario Codognato.
Willem de Kooning, 16th April – 15th September 2024 , Gallerie dell’Accademia, Calle della Carità, 1050, 30123 Venice
About the artist
Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter, Elaine Fried. In the years after World War II, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to as abstract expressionism or “action painting”, and was part of a group of artists that came to be known as the New York School. Other painters in this group included Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Nell Blaine, Adolph Gottlieb, Anne Ryan, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, and Richard Pousette-Dart. De Kooning’s retrospective held at MoMA in 2011–2012 made him one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. Continued
