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Ad Code: 3
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from Auction House Records.
Untitled (Bacchus)
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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Biography from AskART:
| Elaine DeKooning was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York and spent her childhood studying the lives of artists and visiting the museums and galleries of New York City. After high school she attended the American Artists School and the Leonardo da Vinci School and was swept up in the cultural excitement in New York of the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1943 she married Willem de Kooning, one of the group of artists soon to emerge as the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. He was sixteen years older than she.
Elaine never completely abandoned representation. A substantial part of her career had been devoted to portraiture, for which she was particularly known in the 1950s and 1960s. Her most famous portrait commission was of President John F. Kennedy, which she was trying to complete at the time of his assassination. During most of her career she had drawn and painted the male figure. She painted in series and she tended to work on a series for long periods and to work on many canvases within a series simultaneously. When the image was transferred to her canvases, it disintegrated into fragments of pattern and color as the dashes of greens, lavenders and yellows re-created the experience of sky, figure and forest dissolving into the fracturing sunlight.
Like Lee Krasner, wife of Jackson Pollock, Elaine spent much of her life making sure that her husband was the biggest success that she could make him. Whatever time was lost from her own career had been well spent in service to her husband's genius. She followed him into a period of alcoholism. But their marriage was not always happy and Elaine was known to have affairs, although with two of the art world's most famous opinion-makers, who helped make sure Bill de Kooning got good publicity.
Long interested in animal forms, DeKooning made several excursions in 1983 to see the pre-historic caves in southern France and northern Spain. She made sketches in her hotel room after visiting the sites and then translated this material into larger paintings back in the United States. She uses high-keyed colors and the vigorous brushwork of the Abstract Expressionism, declining to mimic the original cave drawings. The work is powerful, suggestive, and at the same time, delicate and painterly.
Eventually, Elaine stopped drinking and reestablished herself as Bill's legal wife, again managing his career at the business end. But her luck didn't hold and at the age of seventy in 1989 she died of lung cancer, having been a very heavy smoker.
Sources include:
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Miriam Brumer in Art News, October 1986
Grace Glueck, a book review in ARTnews, Summer, 1993
Time Magazine, May 3, 1963
Painting Paleolithic by Rose Slivka in Art in America in December 1988
Compiled and written by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher of Laguna Woods, California.
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Biography from AskART:
| Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Elaine de Kooning became a noted Abstract Expressionist painter who also pursued portrait painting in a semi-realist style. However, like so many women artists of that era who married artists, her career was sublimated to that of her famous husband, Willem de Kooning. They became the leaders of the New York School social set in the 1940s, 50s and 60.
In 1943, she married de Kooning, a Dutch immigrant artist, and together and apart they worked relentlessly on their painting and she on the promotion of her husband's talents. During their early years, they were exceedingly poor, and in the last decade of their life together had millions of dollars because of the money earned from his paintings. In retrospect, she is credited as the significant influence on making Willem de Kooning the leading name in New York art circles because of her well-placed flirtations, skillful writing of reviews in art magazines, and ability to speak forcefully in private and public lectures.
Never divorced, they had strong emotional ties, and yet each had numerous sexual relationships with other persons. They separated in the 1960s but reconciled in the 1970s when she overcame her dependence on alcohol and successfully encouraged her husband's sobriety.
Her art training began after high school when she attended the American Artists School and the Leonardo da Vinci School where she studied with Conrad Marca-Relli, a teacher who encouraged her to work her own way and to work hard.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, she did not completely abandon realism, and much of her career was devoted to portraiture for which she was known in the 1950s and 60s. One of her most famous commissions was for President John F. Kennedy, which was in process at the time of the assassination. When he died, she was so saddened that she put down her brushes for a year.
Her personal life was tumultuous, largely due to her alcoholism, and the wild, heady times of riding the crest of Abstract Expressionism. She was a chain smoker which caused her death on February 1, 1989 of lung cancer in New York.
Source:
"American Women Artists" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein
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| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Elaine de Kooning is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Abstract Expressionism
Women Artists
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