Willem de Kooning

This catalogue of an exhibition held at Gagosian Gallery, New York, highlights the critical three-year period, 1983–1985, in the last decade of de Kooning’s long career, during which he radically transformed his style. The paintings in this catalogue were selected by John Elderfield, curator of the widely acclaimed, full-scale retrospective of de Kooning’s work held at MoMA in 2011–12. Of the works of this period, Elderfield observed: "De Kooning truly reinvented himself in these extraordinary canvases.…They remain not only spatially complex, but also extremely physical pictures, both visually open and densely embodied." Elderfield’s essay discusses ten themes in de Kooning’s work specific to these paintings. The book also includes texts by five painters reflecting on de Kooning’s late works.John Elderfield, a consultant at Gagosian Gallery, is chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he directed numerous celebrated exhibitions, among them Kurt Schwitters, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, and De Kooning: A Retrospective. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People of the Year; in 2006 he was made Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.