Willem de Kooning was a pioneering figure among Abstract Expressionists, one of the most influential champions of the dynamic new painting that brought New York to the center of the international scene in the 1950s. This book features ten paintings and drawings by de Kooning selected from The Museum of Modern Art's substantial collection of his work. Together they trace the artist's career, illustrating his much-heralded debut exhibition in 1948, his sensational Woman series of the 1950s and 1960s, and the serene works he made late in life. An essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art.

Text by Sally Yard. Interview by Harold Rosenberg, James T. Valliere.

Willem de Kooning had a restless, probing creativity, pushing on from one style to the next. The battle between abstraction and figuration was essential to his art as he moved from the profound black-and-white abstractions of the 1940s to the ferocious Women of the 1950s, through the later "landscapes" and the final lyrical abstractions. This richly illustrated volume offers a perceptive and sympathetic view of an artist who made some of the greatest art of this century. The variety, the inventiveness, the sheer quality of de Kooning's work demand our attention and reward us with visual riches. Book jacket.