Lot 238 Willem de Kooning: A selection of early sculptures
De Kooning began making sculpture in the summer of 1969 during a holiday in Rome, while visiting his friend Herzl Emmanuel who owned a bronze-casting foundry. At his friend's invitation, de Kooning started making small objects modeled with clay. He liked the process so much that he cast a set of thirteen sculptures. These knotty sculptures have a highly modeled and textured surface. They retain deep impressions in the areas where de Kooning dug in his fingers, pinching the clay for emphasis, actively willing the sculpture to come into being. They are unidealized and thorny visages yet they are compelling and powerfully claim their space. These early sculptures are the seeds for what would become the Clam Diggers and ross-Legged Figures of the early 1970's.
"What makes all of de Kooning's sculpture so rich-and what must modify all attempts at aesthetic analysis and psychological interpretation-is its strain of zestful, paradoxical humor. This is his equivalent of Rodin's electric sensuality and Giacometti's sly, dark irony, the idiosyncratic accent of the great modern artist. It is the emulsifying agent, so to speak, for many kinds of meaning. We have not been used, for some time, to an art of such challenging fullness... Nothing, at first glance, could seem so unnecessary than de Koonings sculpture. Even now, however, these works have begun to create their own necessity through the medium of our own experience. We may expect to have more to think, feel and say about them, as they work their slow effects on us, in the coming years" (P. Schjeldahl, exh. cat., de Kooning drawings/sculptures, Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1974, p. 74).
De Kooning began making sculpture in the summer of 1969 during a holiday in Rome, while visiting his friend Herzl Emmanuel who owned a bronze-casting foundry. At his friend's invitation, de Kooning started making small objects modeled with clay. He liked the process so much that he cast a set of thirteen sculptures. These knotty sculptures have a highly modeled and textured surface. They retain deep impressions in the areas where de Kooning dug in his fingers, pinching the clay for emphasis, actively willing the sculpture to come into being. They are unidealized and thorny visages yet they are compelling and powerfully claim their space. These early sculptures are the seeds for what would become the Clam Diggers and ross-Legged Figures of the early 1970's.
"What makes all of de Kooning's sculpture so rich-and what must modify all attempts at aesthetic analysis and psychological interpretation-is its strain of zestful, paradoxical humor. This is his equivalent of Rodin's electric sensuality and Giacometti's sly, dark irony, the idiosyncratic accent of the great modern artist. It is the emulsifying agent, so to speak, for many kinds of meaning. We have not been used, for some time, to an art of such challenging fullness... Nothing, at first glance, could seem so unnecessary than de Koonings sculpture. Even now, however, these works have begun to create their own necessity through the medium of our own experience. We may expect to have more to think, feel and say about them, as they work their slow effects on us, in the coming years" (P. Schjeldahl, exh. cat., de Kooning drawings/sculptures, Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1974, p. 74).
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)
Untitled #4
Closed12 May 2010
Price Realised
USD 110,500
More Information
Specialist note
In 1969 de Kooning traveled to Rome and with the help of an old friend and sculptor Herzl Emanuel he created his first sculptures; thirteen works were fashioned in clay and then cast by Emanuel in bronze in editions of six. Considering de Kooning's aggressive painting style and continuous fascination with the figure it is no surprise that he would arrive at sculpture as a creative outlet, nor is it surprising that this first series of sculptures would be raw descendents of his liquefied cubist clam diggers, often the focus of many paintings dating to the late 1960's.
"In some ways, clay is even better than oil. You can work and work on a painting but you can't start over again with the canvas like it was before you put that first stroke down. And sometimes, in the end, it's no good, no matter what you do. But with clay, I cover it with a wet cloth and come back to it the next morning and if I don't like what I did, or I changed my mind, I can break it down and start over. It's always fresh"
(Willem de Kooning, 1972 as quoted in, A. Forge, D. Sylvester and W. Tucker, Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 34).
"In some ways, clay is even better than oil. You can work and work on a painting but you can't start over again with the canvas like it was before you put that first stroke down. And sometimes, in the end, it's no good, no matter what you do. But with clay, I cover it with a wet cloth and come back to it the next morning and if I don't like what I did, or I changed my mind, I can break it down and start over. It's always fresh"
(Willem de Kooning, 1972 as quoted in, A. Forge, D. Sylvester and W. Tucker, Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 34).