A Tree in Naples

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.

late 1950s

From female figures to abstraction

In the late 1950s De Kooning’s work shifted away from the figurative images of women, though he returned to the subject on occasion, and began to show an interest in more abstract, less representational imagery.

11 juillet 1959 – 11 octobre 1959

Exhibition: Documenta II

13 March 1962

Becomes a U.S. citizen

On 13 March 1962 De Kooning became a U.S. citizen.