Two remarkable Willem de Kooning works are up for sale at Sotheby’s hotly anticipated Macklowe Collection sale today⁠. ⁠⁠

Painted six years apart, Untitled XXXIII (1977) and Untitled IV (1983) represent two of the finest examples of de Kooning’s staggering abstract vernacular, which placed him firmly at the forefront of Abstract Expressionism. ⁠⁠

Painted at a time when the artist had moved out of Manhattan in favour of the landscapes of Long Island, Untitled XXXIII encapsulates de Kooning’s renewed focus on painting in this period. Rendered in thick impasto, the white and crimson pigment sweep across the canvas, ensuring an unrivalled physicality and placing it among one of his most iconic works of the period.⁠⁠ In Untitled IV we see a progression of this painterly approach.

Paths of blue and red paint carve through the white canvas with a renewed delicacy and indomitable elegance, a painterly method characteristic of his later works.⁠⁠

Main image: Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXXIII (1977). Oil on canvas. 152.4 x 137.2 cm.