Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)

"It has become obvious over the years that the human figure is the real center of his art. The various times when he has departed from it have been episodes that, once they have been worked through, have allowed him to make closer and richer engagements with the figure. The sculpture helps us to see this. Its dark bronze gives a somber inflexion to the very women we know in the paintinsg, hilarious in pink, and calms their panic mood. Freestandingness helps to unravel the imagery... With each new appearance of the figure in his work, a haptic mode of perception is more and more in evidence, that is, a mode in which touch, body-feeling, and muscular sensation take precedence over vision. Differentiations of contour and texture, and potentials for action, dominate. Space takes on the scale of the body itself."

Andrew Forge, "De Kooning's Sculpture," Willem de Kooning: Sculpture, New York, 1996, p. 37.