1960

Prints and Drawings

In 1960, on a visit to the Bay Area, Willem de Kooning, in completely impromptu and unpremeditated circumstances, made two huge lithographs, which in retrospect can be seen as harbingers of the so-called American print renaissance that transformed the history of printmaking in this country. De Kooning had never made a lithograph, but at the print studios of the University of California, Berkeley, the artist was left alone with two lithographic stones, each nearly four feet high. Standing over the stones, using a mop as his drawing implement, in less than an hour de Kooning created two explosive images—this and another, called Waves II—that embody not just the artist's forceful gestures of that afternoon but also the immediacy and spontaneity that epitomize Abstract Expressionism. Each lithograph was printed in fewer than ten impressions.

Medium

Lithograph

Dimensions

platemark: 42 15/16 × 28 3/4 in. (109 × 73 cm)
framed: 52 1/4 × 37 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (132.7 × 94.6 × 4.4 cm)

Credit Line

Katharine Ordway Fund

Accession Number

2001.120.1

Culture
Period

20th century

Classification
Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance

Provenance

Purchased from the Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, 2001
Bibliography
  • Lisa Hodermarsky and Tiffany Sprague, eds., A Perspicacious Tenure: Suzanne Boorsch at Yale (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2018), 104, ill.
  • John Elderfield et al., De Kooning: A Retrospective, ed. David Frankel, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2011), 328, pl. 116
Object copyright
Additional information

Object/Work type

lithographs

Edition

Edition of approximately 9

Signed

In graphite, LR: de Kooning '60

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