Absolutely Transformative: De Kooning Exhibition Uncovers Raw Intensity of Early Work
A groundbreaking exhibition at Princeton University Art Museum is offering an intimate look at the formative years that established Willem de Kooning as a titan of abstract expressionism. Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945-50 presents eighteen powerful paintings that reveal the artist's urgent exploration between figuration and abstraction during this pivotal period.
The Delayed Debut That Made History
Willem de Kooning held his first solo exhibition at Charles Egan Gallery in spring 1948, just before his 44th birthday. This exhibition proved to be a monumental success, fundamentally reshaping his career trajectory and catapulting him to international prominence by the early 1950s. By the decade's end, many critics and collectors regarded him as the world's pre-eminent painter.
"He wanted to wait until he really had a body of work that he felt good about," explained de Kooning expert and exhibition co-curator John Elderfield. "He came up with an exhibition that had about a dozen works."
A Concentrated Look at Creative Evolution
The Princeton exhibition, while not featuring the exact lineup from the historic Egan show, provides audiences with a focused examination of de Kooning's creative development during these breakthrough years. The show captures an artist who had developed an underground reputation among art insiders but had not yet achieved widespread recognition.
Influential art critic Clement Greenberg played a crucial role in elevating de Kooning's status through his review of the Egan Gallery exhibition, bringing the artist's work to broader attention. The current exhibition features key pieces from this fertile period, including Black Friday and Dark Pond, allowing viewers to witness de Kooning's artistic maturation firsthand.
Signature Style and Restricted Palette
The paintings in The Breakthrough Years display a notably restricted color palette, dominated by blacks and tans with occasional vibrant washes of color. Electric yellow appears in Secretary, while beguiling ocher characterizes Gansevoort Street. De Kooning's sinuous lines dance across canvases in what Elderfield describes as "controlled ecstasies," while his masterful use of shading creates stunning feasts of negative space.
"There is something about him reducing his means and working without chromatic color, which really gives these paintings a kind of intensity," Elderfield observed. "He's using black as a color, which makes these paintings seem extraordinarily vivid and very present."
Transformative Development and Artistic Rivalry
The mid- to late 1940s represented an absolutely transformative period in de Kooning's career, during which he emerged as a leader of the New York school. "What happened in the 40s was absolutely transformative in his career," Elderfield emphasized. "He becomes an absolutely mature artist in that five-year period."
This decade witnessed the first museum purchase of one of his paintings—Painting, acquired by MoMA in 1948, which is featured in the current exhibition. It was also a time when de Kooning developed a creative rivalry with fellow abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. "Part of his development as an artist was intertwined with the fact that Pollock was making waves at the time," Elderfield noted. "Some of his works after the Egan exhibition seem to be in competition with Pollock."
The Crucial Role of Elaine de Kooning
Despite his raw creative talent, de Kooning showed little interest in marketing himself or developing his artistic career strategically. His wife, Elaine de Kooning—an accomplished artist in her own right—served as his informal publicist, spearheading the Charles Egan show and helping her husband secure the recognition his work deserved.
"His wife was realizing that other artists were getting a lot of coverage because they were having shows, so she pushed him to have a show," Elderfield explained. "I think de Kooning felt like he didn't really have a whole group of paintings together and he was being pushed along by her."
Elaine also assisted with a task that held little interest for her husband: titling his paintings. Along with other supporters from the Egan gallery, she participated in naming sessions where they gave works memorable titles. According to Elderfield, de Kooning cared so little about titles that sometimes the person who acquired a work would be the one to name it.
Evolution and Enduring Legacy
From the 1950s onward, de Kooning would continually reinvent himself, famously returning to figuration with his controversial woman paintings. This move demonstrated his maverick, anti-conformity sensibility, though it didn't please everyone—Pollock reportedly called him a traitor for this artistic shift.
Yet the woman paintings resonated with cultural icons like Bob Dylan, whom Elderfield personally escorted through MoMA's major 2011 de Kooning exhibition. "Bob Dylan said he wanted to go through the show with me, and he remarked how de Kooning's style kept changing all the time," Elderfield recalled. "When we got to the woman paintings, he told me: 'This is when de Kooning went electric.'"
De Kooning's legacy continues to resonate powerfully today, with his works achieving record-breaking prices at auction. In 2015, his painting Interchange sold for $300 million, setting a record at the time for the highest price ever paid for a painting. While Elderfield notes that the flashier, later works tend to attract collectors seeking dramatic statement pieces, the paintings in The Breakthrough Years reveal the foundational intensity that made de Kooning's later innovations possible.
The exhibition continues to inspire contemporary artists, with sculptor Richard Serra among those influenced by these early works. As Elderfield reflects on the challenge of selecting works for exhibition: "Trying to do a selection of de Kooning's work is like picking clouds from the sky. There's too many of them." The eighteen paintings currently on display at Princeton University Art Museum—on view until July 26—demonstrate precisely why de Kooning's breakthrough years remain so compelling to scholars, artists, and art lovers alike.
