Willem de Kooning at Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice

For a man who said 'flesh is the reason oil paint was invented', it's hardly surprising that Willem de Kooning is the Abstract Expressionist painter most associated with the figure—specifically the female figure—but much of his work was also closely connected to nature.

Three of the Dutch-American artist's most famous 'abstract pastoral landscape' paintings, borrowed from major New York museums, will hang together for the first time in an exhibition at the Gallerie dell'Accademia during the 60th Venice Biennale (20 April–24 November 2024).

Seeing these canvases reunited allows us to look at them anew. Where do these images sit within the context of de Kooning's oeuvre, and what do they look like now amid the onslaught of contemporary painting seen in recent years?

Painted after returning from a trip to Italy, de Kooning's images reference specific places alluded to in their titles: A Tree in Naples, Villa Borghese, and Door to the River (all 1960). In the preceding years, he had started to move away from the figure towards more abstract compositions. The use of wider brushes emerges, bringing with it a new-found openness and clarity. De Kooning did not view these paintings as a departure from the figure though, famously remarking to Thomas B. Hess in 1953 that 'the landscape is in the Woman, and there is Woman in the landscapes'.

He still made figurative works on paper alongside these paintings during this period and his treatment of both subjects is similar: shape, form, and colour are manipulated with loose energetic brushstrokes. Splattered paint reveals the speed of application and although de Kooning famously sat for hours at a time pondering his next move, the sensation takes precedence over detail.

The more restrained palette of Door to the River and Villa Borghese invokes a feeling of space and light synonymous with the outdoors. These images encapsulate the point at which de Kooning starts to work with more freedom and anticipates his pared-back flowing compositions made later in his life.

There is a joyfulness to these paintings but the thick fleshy texture that disappears later remains intact. De Kooning told David Sylvester in 1960, 'I get freer. I feel I am getting more to myself in the sense of, I have all my forces ... I have this sort of feeling that I am all there now.'

De Kooning's influence can be felt across painting today. It is seen in the restless fleshy works of Cecily Brown, and the emotive abstract paintings by Catherine Goodman shown at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles recently. Christopher Wool and Albert Oehlen are considered to be two of the most important exponents of abstraction over the last few decades, and de Kooning is at the heart of so much of their practice—from the looping line to the boldness of brushstrokes and the depth of atmosphere conjured from this alchemical medium.

Having so many contemporary painters borrowing from him stylistically imbues his paintings with a freshness today. If an artist can be measured by their influence on future generations then de Kooning is winning.—[O]