His parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced in 1907, and de Kooning lived first with his father and then with his mother. Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on April 24, 1904. Other painters in this group included Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, Anne Ryan, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, and Richard Pousette-Dart. 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. On December 9, 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried. He moved to the United States in 1926, and became an American citizen in 1962. He was born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. Willem de Kooning died on Maon Long Island.Willem de Kooning (/ˈwɪləm də ˈkuːnɪŋ/ Dutch: Ap– March 19, 1997) was a Dutch abstract expressionist artist. His works can be found in the permanent collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam the Tate Modern, London the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra the Museum of Modern Art, New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., among many others. Guggenheim Museum, New York followed in 1979 with an exhibition of the artists' recent works, and in 1997 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, honored the artist with a retrospective, followed again by a retrospective in 2012. After beginning his first sculpture work in 1969 while in Rome, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis organized an exhibition of the artists' sculptures in 1974, which travelled throughout the United States. In 1968, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam held a retrospective of de Kooning's work, for which the artist returned to the Netherlands for the first time since 1926. Paintings from the 1980s continue this thread even further, with large swaths of subtly toned white canvas augmented by ethereal, ribbon-like strokes of color. The light and landscape of the East Hampton town reminded him of Holland, and opened up his canvases to include softer colors and more loosely painted forms. In 1963, de Kooning moved to the town of Springs, dividing his time between Long Island and Manhattan before permanently relocating to Springs in 1971. The 1960s yielded works of abstract urban landscapes and a new group of “Women”. However, the Museum of Modern Art, New York saw their importance, and purchased “Woman I” (1950-1052) in 1953. These aggressively painted female figures shocked the art world when they were first exhibited, as much for the way they were painted as for de Kooning’s return to figuration, which many in his circle deemed as a betrayal of Abstract Expressionist principles. In the early 1950s, he began to paint his now celebrated “Women” series. The show consisted largely of black-and-white abstract paintings of densely worked oil and enamel. After this time, de Kooning painted full-time, and was influenced primarily by Cubism and Surrealism, and artists such as Picasso and Gorky, with whom he shared a studio.ĭe Kooning's first solo exhibition was held at the Egan Gallery, New York in 1948, establishing the artists' reputation. Once in New York, de Kooning worked a variety of odd jobs until 1935, when he was employed by the mural and easel divisions of the WPA Federal Art Project. De Kooning then immigrated to the United States in 1926, and worked as a house painter in Hoboken, New Jersey before relocating to New York City in 1927. De Kooning entered the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts & Letters in 1916, where he studied until 1925. Willem de Kooning, a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism, was born on Apin Rotterdam, the Netherlands.