Title: Villa Borghese

Poster size: 50 * 70cm

Artist: Willem de Kooning

Age: 1960 Media: Oil on canvas

Size: approx. 203 x 178 cm.

This one is inspired by Villa Borghese in Rome. Guggenheim's introduction mentions that de Kooning stayed in Rome for about five months between 1959 and 1960, and the title of this work points to Rome's famous public parks; the Mediterranean colors in the picture are reminiscent of sunshine, sky, water and grass.

This one is brighter than A Tree in Naples. The yellow-green color resembles a grassy slope illuminated by the sun, and the dark blue horizontal pen strokes like water or shadows, giving the whole “Italian afternoon” a sense of openness. But what's great about de Kooning is that instead of turning the landscape into a beautiful postcard, he turned the landscape into a physical action: pushing, wiping, sweeping, blowing, like remembering a place with color.

Poster / Glossy Paper

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and later moved to the United States. He was one of the most important Abstract Expressionist artists of the 20th century and a central figure in the New York School. Both Tate and Britannica classify him as a Dutch-American Abstract Expressionist painter; Britannica also identifies him as an important exponent of Action Painting.

A well-known aspect of his work is that he does not completely separate the “abstract” from the “figurative.” He painted figures early in his career and later moved into abstraction, but traces of bodies, landscapes, women, cities, and light often remain in his images. In other words, rather than simply painting geometric shapes, he breaks the real world apart and reassembles it in an intense, emotional way.

De Kooning’s brushwork often has a palpable physicality, and his paintings seem to be constantly changing. This is part of their appeal: they do not hang quietly on the wall but seem still to be breathing, struggling, and moving.