A century after Willem de Kooning set sail from Europe for New York, the Dutch-born artist returns to Amsterdam in a major retrospective at the Rijksmuseum. Willem de Kooning at Work, running from 9 October 2026 to 17 January 2027, brings together around 120 works to trace the restless energy, radical experimentation and physical intensity that made de Kooning one of the defining painters of the 20th century. From the provocative Woman paintings to the exuberant abstractions that followed, the exhibition reveals an artist who continually pushed painting between figuration and abstraction, and transformed both in the process.
A century ago, de Kooning’s journey to America almost took a very different turn. On the docks in Rotterdam, a friend realised that the ship he had boarded was actually bound for South America and alerted him just in time. Had he remained on board, one of modern art’s great what-ifs might have unfolded differently: Buenos Aires, rather than New York, could have become the setting for his radical reimagining of painting.
De Kooning transformed the possibilities of abstraction by refusing to leave the human figure behind. His paintings, charged with sweeping gestures, fleshy tones and restless forms, unsettled the art world and established him as one of the defining figures of post-war American painting. The critic Harold Rosenberg famously described him as “the outstanding artist of the ideological epoch in American art”. De Kooning seemed to possess a natural appetite for such grand pronouncements. There was something almost combative in the way he attacked the canvas, pushing and pulling paint with the swagger and physicality of a prize fighter.
This major retrospective brings the Dutch-born artist back to Amsterdam, presenting around 120 works spanning his career. Alongside key paintings from his seismic Woman series, the exhibition explores the extraordinary range and evolution of his practice, offering a fresh perspective on an artist who fundamentally reshaped the language of modern painting.
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Image: Willem de Kooning, Untitled (Three Women), ca. 1948. © 2026 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Pictoright, Amsterdam.
