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WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997) UNTITLED signed "de Kooning" lower right oil on paper mounted on ca...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:300,000.00 - 400,000.00 USD
WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997) UNTITLED signed  de Kooning  lower right oil on paper mounted on ca...
WILLEM DE KOONING
(1904-1997)
UNTITLED
signed "de Kooning" lower right
oil on paper mounted on canvas
417/8 x 30 in. (106.3 x 76.2 cm)
painted in 1968
ESTIMATE: $300,000-400,000
PROVENANCE
Private collection, NEW YORK
Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future. I have no nostalgia, however. If I am confronted with one of those small Mesopotamian figures, I have no nostalgia for it but, instead, I may get into a state of anxiety. Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think of inside or outside-or of art in general-as a situation of comfort. I know there is a terrific idea there somewhere, but whenever I want to get into it, I get a feeling of apathy and want to lie down and go to sleep. Some painters, including myself, do not care what chair they are sitting on... It does not even have to be a comfortable one. They are too nervous to find out where they ought to sit. They do not want to "sit in style." Rather, they have found that painting-any kind of painting, and style of painting-to be painting at all, in fact-is a way of living today, a style of living, so to speak. That is where the form of it lies. It is exactly in its uselessness that it is free. Those artists do not want to conform. They only want to be inspired.
W. de Kooning, Stedelijk Museum catalogue, 1968