The exhibition will be the first to explore the time de Kooning spent in Italy in 1959 and 1969 and the profound impact those visits had on his work.
“Willem de Kooning and Italy”
This exhibition will trace the impact of Willem de Kooning’s two extended visits to Italy, one in 1959 and one in 1969, on the works that followed each and on the trajectory of his œuvre. The lasting effect of these two creative periods will be revealed in an exemplary selection of works, ranging from the late 1950s through to the 1980s, from important private and museum collections both in Europe and the United States.
The exhibition will include a selection of the large and striking “Black and White Rome” drawings de Kooning made during his first extended visit to Rome in 1959. They will be shown with works from the late 1950s, made in the years leading up to de Kooning’s first visit to Italy. For the first time, three of de Kooning’s best-known pastoral landscapes Door to the River, A Tree in Naples and Villa Borghese will be exhibited together. Painted in New York in 1960, the lingering memory of his trip to Italy is clear. This section of the exhibition also includes large figurative paintings from the mid-1960s that paved the way for his interest in sculpture. A gallery focusing on sculpture will showcase thirteen small bronzes that de Kooning made in Rome. Created after a chance encounter while in Rome with a sculptor friend, these were the result of the artist’s first experiments with clay, leading him to produce a substantial body of sculpture back in New York from 1972 to 1974. The exhibition will also place painting and sculpture in dialogue with drawings from the 1960s and 1970s. Highlights include four ink drawings that de Kooning made while in Spoleto in 1969, presented alongside a complementary selection of intimate, gestural drawings that are conceptually related to the sculptures. In these drawings de Kooning fragmented the figure, often leaving empty spaces balanced against his vigorous lines.