Willem de Kooning (born April 24, 1904 in Rotterdam, Netherlands; died March 19, 1997 in East Hampton, New York) began his artistic journey in his native Holland, working at night in commercial art and decorative painting while attending evening classes at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. In 1926 he emigrated to the United States—initially arriving under humble circumstances and working as a house-painter before relocating to New York and devoting himself to fine art. In the decades following World War II, de Kooning became one of the central figures of the Abstract Expressionism movement and particularly associated with “action painting,” thanks to his bold gestures, dense surfaces, and the dynamic interplay of figure and ground. His distinctive approach blended figuration with abstraction—most famously in his Woman series (1950s) and the later abstract landscapes of the 1960s and 70s—challenging the prevailing modernist division between representation and pure abstraction. Beyond his studio practice, de Kooning’s influence reverberated through the art world: he taught, exhibited widely, and helped shape New York’s status as an epicenter of avant-garde post-war art. Although his later years were marked by illness (including the onset of Alzheimer’s disease) and reduced output, his body of work remains a vital part of 20th-century art history—he is remembered as a painter whose restless exploration of gesture, color, and the human figure helped redefine what painting could be.