The Rijksmuseum presents Willem de Kooning at work, a large-scale exhibition that centres on Willem de Kooning’s working process and artistic development. One hundred years after De Kooning left his native city of Rotterdam to emigrate to the United States, his work returns symbolically to the Netherlands with this exhibition. The project is realised in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, with the support of The Willem de Kooning Foundation in New York.
Featuring approximately 120 works from international collections, the exhibition offers, for the first time in the Netherlands, an extensive overview of De Kooning’s oeuvre, with a particular focus on his drawings, complemented by a selection of his most iconic paintings and sculptures. Tracing De Kooning’s development from his early years in the Netherlands to his breakthrough in New York, the presentation provides an in-depth insight into the practice of an artist who continuously sought renewal and fundamentally reshaped modern art.
