Elaine de Kooning
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Elaine Marie de Kooning (March 12, 1918 - February 1, 1989), was an abstract expressionist painter and a vibrant figure in the New York School. She was born Elaine Marie Fried in Brooklyn, New York, USA.
During her youth, her artistic sensibility was encouraged by her mother, who took her to museums and taught her to draw what she saw. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School then doing a brief stint at Hunter College She began to study at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, New York, in 1936, but soon transferred to the American Artists School.
In 1938, Elaine was introduced to a Dutch immigrant artist, Willem de Kooning. She soon began studying with him, and approximately five years later, on December 9, 1943, they married. While her artistic reputation was eclipsed to some degree by his fame, she was able to forge a name as an artist and as a critic for ARTnews. Her monograph articles on Albers, Gorky, Smith, Davis, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and other artists of the period, are historically seminal.[citation needed]
Elaine de Kooning is also credited with discovering the Russian-American artist Alexander Ney (born 1939). In 1973, de Kooning and Robert Motherwell - acting as her French interpreter - encountered the young Ney's artworks at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. When Ney immigrated to the United States in 1974, de Kooning introduced him to gallery owners and invited him to studio parties. [1]
Her painting style is characterized by a deft line coupled with realist compression and emotionally charged abandon. Her subjects ranged from early still life to portraiture, with purely abstract paintings executed during the fifties. She held guest professorships at Yale and Carnegie Mellon University and painted the portrait of John F. Kennedy from life, for the Truman Library. Kennedy was assassinated during the creation of this work, impacting on her to such a degree that she stopped painting for nearly a year.
The de Koonings' intimate relationship was a complex and vibrant one. In the 1940s, they lived as a typical New York City artist couple, enduring extreme poverty but producing an astonishing number of works. Both developed significant problems with alcohol during the late forties, and lived apart from the late fifties through the mid seventies. However, they never divorced. Their deep emotional ties drew them back together in 1976, when Elaine overcame her alcoholism and helped Willem on his own path to sobriety. Artistically, the eighties was perhaps the most prolific decade for them both.
Elaine was a chain smoker, which eventually led to her death from lung cancer, at age 70.
[edit] References
- ^ Bergoffen, Celia. "Sculptor Stresses Ideas in his Ceramics", The Villager, February 7, 1994.
- Grace Glueck; New York Times. Obituary February 2, 1989
- Paul Schimmel; Judith E Stein; Newport Harbor Art Museum, The Figurative fifties : New York figurative expressionism, (Newport Beach, Calif. : Newport Harbor Art Museum : New York : Rizzoli, 1988.) ISBN 0847809420 9780847809424 0917493125 9780917493126
- Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
- Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
- The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism Selected Writings ISBN 0-8076-1337-1
- Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-4560-6
