A significant exhibition featuring one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century, Willem de Kooning, will take place in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice’s exhibition space. It’s one of the most prestigious shows to visit as part of the Biennale Collateral programme.

Willem de Kooning (1904, Rotterdam, the Netherlands – 1997, East Hampton, USA) was one of the great artists of the twentieth century. Along with his contemporaries from the late 1940s and early 1950s such as Rothko, Frankenthaler, and Pollock, de Kooning was a pioneering artist who defied established conventions by blurring the lines between foreground and background and using paint to create expressive, abstract gestures. He was variously referred to as a “Action Painter,” “Abstract Expressionist,” and a member of the “New York School.” He remained one of the few nonconforming artists who played a major role in the historic move of the avant-garde art centre from Paris to New York in the years after World War II.

Willem de Kooning and Italy is an exhibition that will open to the public on April 17, 2024, in conjunction with the 60th International Venice Biennale, and continue until September 15, 2024. This show will be the first to examine the significant influence de Kooning’s trips to Italy in 1959 and 1969 had on his artistic output. It is the largest artist presentation ever held in Italy, bringing together almost 75 paintings.

Gary Garrels and Mario Codognato, Curators, said: “Willem de Kooning collected from the cacophony of visual excitement, light and movement in daily life to create his own lexicon. The impact of any visual encounter could render or generate an idea for moving into a new drawing or painting. Observing how his New York and East Hampton environments worked into his paintings and drawings, the same occurred in Rome – a gestalt of “glimpses”. During these formative periods of time in Rome, de Kooning synthesised from all around him a new way of looking and activating his medium, experiencing both classical Italian paintings and sculpture as well as the work of his new Italian artist friends.”

For the first time, three of de Kooning’s best-known pastoral landscapes Door to the River, A Tree in Naples and Villa Borghese will be exhibited together. Painted in New York in 1960, the lingering memory of his trip to Italy is clear. This section of the exhibition also includes large figurative paintings from the mid-1960s that paved the way for his interest in sculpture.

It’s one of this year’s Biennale highlights and the exhibition promises to shine new light on the American artist.

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Images: Pirate (Untitled II), 1981, oil on canvas, 88 x 77 inches (223,4 x 194,4 cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund, 1982 / © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation, SIAE,