Willem de Kooning
Untitled
1963-1973
Scroll
Willem de Kooning
Untitled
1963-1973
Physical Qualities
Charcoal with stumping, Sheet: 473 × 605 mm. (18 5/8 × 23 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection
Object Number
1973.37
"The landscape is in the Woman and there is Woman in the landscape." Willem de Kooning
This drawing combines two of the artist's major themes, a woman and a landscape. The doll-like figure has a caricatured face and exaggerated eyelashes. With the ruffled skirt pulled up above her knees, the figure has a provocative, though slightly unsteady, stance. The head, crowned with a flurry of lines and excessively round and wide, serves both as part of the figure and as the sun in the landscape behind her. In this composition of ambiguous, fragmented forms, the female figure is absorbed by its environment, merging into the landscape.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 1973; Mr. Edward Benesch, NY, 1973; Fourcade, Droll Inc, NY, 1973; M. Knoedler & Co., 1969; the artist
Select Views: Drawings from the Benesch Collection
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)
On Paper: Figure Drawings from the Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection
Willem de Kooning Drawing
Carlson, Victor, and Carol Hynning Smith. Master Drawings and Watercolors of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: The Baltimore Museum of Art. New York, NY: The American Federation of Arts, 1979, pp. 185, ill.
Elderfield, John. De Kooning: A Retrospective. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2011, page 376, plate 137.
Inscribed: lower left in charcoal: "de Kooning"