Willem de Kooning: A selection of early sculptures De Kooning began making sculpture in the summer of 1969 during a holiday in Rome, while visiting his friend Herzl Emmanuel who owned a bronze-casting foundry. At his friend's invitation, de Kooning started making small objects modeled with clay. He liked the process so much that he cast a set of thirteen sculptures. These knotty sculptures have a highly modeled and textured surface. They retain deep impressions in the areas where de Kooning dug in his fingers, pinching the clay for emphasis, actively willing the sculpture to come into being. They are unidealized and thorny visages yet they are compelling and powerfully claim their space. These early sculptures are the seeds for what would become the Clam Diggers and ross-Legged Figures of the early 1970's. "What makes all of de Kooning's sculpture so rich-and what must modify all attempts at aesthetic analysis and psychological interpretation-is its strain of zestful, paradoxical humor. This is his equivalent of Rodin's electric sensuality and Giacometti's sly, dark irony, the idiosyncratic accent of the great modern artist. It is the emulsifying agent, so to speak, for many kinds of meaning. We have not been used, for some time, to an art of such challenging fullness... Nothing, at first glance, could seem so unnecessary than de Koonings sculpture. Even now, however, these works have begun to create their own necessity through the medium of our own experience. We may expect to have more to think, feel and say about them, as they work their slow effects on us, in the coming years" (P. Schjeldahl, exh. cat., de Kooning drawings/sculptures, Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1974, p. 74).

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)

Untitled #4

Details

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)
Untitled #4
incised with initials and number 'W de K. 3/6' (on the edge)
bronze with brown patina
4 x 8 x 5½ in. (10.1 x 20.3 x 13.9 cm.)
Executed in 1969. This work is number three from an edition of six.

Provenance

Estate of the artist, New York
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

Literature

D. Waldman, Willem de Kooning in East Hampton, New York, 1978, p. 114 (another cast illustrated).

Exhibited

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, An Exhibition by de Kooning Introducing His Sculpture and New Paintings, October-November 1972, n.p., no. 35 (another cast exhibited).
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada; Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection; Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts; St. Louis, Washington University Gallery of Art, de Kooning: Drawings/Sculpture, March 1974-June 1974, n.p., no. 130 (another cast exhibited).
Los Angeles, James Corcoran Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, May-June 1976.
Edinburgh, Fruit Market Gallery; London, Serpentine Gallery, The Sculptures of de Kooning with Related Paintings, Drawings & Lithographs, October 1977-January 1978, n.p., no. 4 (another cast exhibited).
Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Willem de Kooning/Pittsburgh International Series, October 1979-January 1980.
East Hampton, Guild Hall, Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951-1981, May-July 1981.
New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., Willem de Kooning: The Complete Sculpture, 1969-1981, May-June 1983.
Cologne, Joseph-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Willem de Kooning: Skulpturen, September-October 1983, pp. 40-41 and 122, no. 4 (illustrated, another cast exhibited).
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Berlin, Akademie der Kunste; Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centres de Georges Pomidou, Willem de Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture, December 1983-September 1984, p. 248, no. 260 (illustrated, another cast exhibited).
Goslar, Das Mönchehaus Museum, Exhibition on the occasion of the presentation of Kaiserring to Willem de Kooning, September-October 1984.
New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Willem de Kooning Sculpture, May-June 1996, p.52, no. 4 (illustrated, another cast exhibited).

Lot Essay

In 1969 de Kooning traveled to Rome and with the help of an old friend and sculptor Herzl Emanuel he created his first sculptures; thirteen works were fashioned in clay and then cast by Emanuel in bronze in editions of six. Considering de Kooning's aggressive painting style and continuous fascination with the figure it is no surprise that he would arrive at sculpture as a creative outlet, nor is it surprising that this first series of sculptures would be raw descendents of his liquefied cubist clam diggers, often the focus of many paintings dating to the late 1960's.

"In some ways, clay is even better than oil. You can work and work on a painting but you can't start over again with the canvas like it was before you put that first stroke down. And sometimes, in the end, it's no good, no matter what you do. But with clay, I cover it with a wet cloth and come back to it the next morning and if I don't like what I did, or I changed my mind, I can break it down and start over. It's always fresh"

(Willem de Kooning, 1972 as quoted in, A. Forge, D. Sylvester and W. Tucker, Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 34).

Untitled #4

Lot Essay

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