Willem de Kooning: The Last Beginning

This book was published on the occasion of Willem de Kooning: The Last Beginning at Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York. Curated by Klaus Kertess and presented in cooperation with the Johanna Liesbeth de Kooning Trust, the exhibition featured twenty-three works by de Kooning, attesting to the radical stylistic shifts that culminated in the transformations of his final working years. Juxtaposed with works from prior decades, it traced the continuities of the artist’s paintings from the 1980s. Moving away from the thick impasto of his earlier canvases, he developed ebullient compositions of pastel-imbued whites overlaid with dexterous manipulations of vivid color.

The catalogue features color plates of the exhibited paintings and works on paper, along with archival photographs of de Kooning at work in his studio. In his essay “Further Reflection,” Kertess considers the artist’s practice, discussing transformations in his approaches to painting in his final body of work.