WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997)

“She could be open-ended and mysterious, from ancient Mesopotamia and also modern Hollywood. She could owe something to Picasso’s women but also reflect the symbolist deities that filled the art of de Kooning’s youth, muses who often abandoned and possessed men. She could be mother and wife, monster and lover, a creature at once earthbound and hallucinatory, grotesque, cruel, monumental, cartoonish, and funny—a contemporary goddess who could possess the viewer, but could not, in turn, be possessed” (M. Stevens & A. Swan, de Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2004, p. 310).