Willem de KooningAmerican, 1904–1997Night
May one see it?
Not receiving at present
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minneapolis, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- 3 days ago
- In this state since
- Sep 25, 2026
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the painting
The forms of Night are rich with suggestion. Some vaguely resemble human anatomy, while others recall architecture. These ambiguous shapes seem to float and jostle on the canvas. Night belongs to a series of abstract black-and-white paintings--inspired by de Kooning's late-night walks in New York--that express the spirit and texture of the modern metropolis. The broken brushwork and areas of scraping and reworking suggest the nervous energy of urban life--or the inner turmoil of the artist.
De Kooning was one of the most emotionally expressive Abstract Expressionists and an important influence on younger gestural painters.
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Particulars
- Accession number
- 63.36
In the catalog
Sources
- Minneapolis Institute of Art: the museum's own open data · fetched 3 days ago
- Image: Minneapolis Institute of Art — © The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Meanwhile, in the life of Willem de Kooning
The whole life1940s
Meets Franz Kline
De Kooning met the younger painter Franz Kline, who was also working in the figurative style of American realism and had been drawn to monochrome. Kline, who died young, became one of De Kooning’s closest artist friends; his influence is evident in De Kooning’s calligraphic black images of this period.
1943–1957
An “open” marriage with Elaine
Willem and Elaine’s marriage was later called an open marriage: both were casual about sex and about each other’s affairs. Elaine had affairs with men who helped further Willem’s career, such as the art critic Harold Rosenberg, the ARTnews editor Thomas B. Hess and Charles Egan, owner of the Charles Egan Gallery.
1948
First solo exhibition at the Charles Egan Gallery
In 1948 De Kooning had his first one-man show at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York City, consisting largely of black-and-white works, though a few pieces had passages of bright colour. By then he had already acquired a formidable underground reputation.
1948–1966
Fourteen solo exhibitions
From 1948 to 1966 De Kooning had 14 solo exhibitions, many in New York but also nationally and internationally, among them the Egan Gallery, the Sidney Janis Gallery, the Martha Jackson Gallery, the Allan Stone Gallery and museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Smith College Museum of Art. There were two a year in 1953, 1964 and 1965.
1950s
The path of “figurative abstractions”
In the 1950s De Kooning followed a path of primitivisation and developed so-called “figurative abstractions”: a solitary female figure, under furious, pasty “blow-like” brushstrokes, turns into a painterly totem open to radical Freudian readings.
