"Willem de Kooning, Artist and Immigrant" with Stephen Mack

Join us for the next lecture in our "Artists and Immigrants Series" with Stephen Mack, who will discuss the life and work of Willem de Kooning (1904–97). Today, Willem de Kooning is recognized as one of the most important and influential painters of his generation. An artist’s artist whose work hangs in museums across the world, it can be easy to forget just how humble his beginnings in the United States were. He arrived in the U.S. at twenty-two years old as a stowaway, not speaking the language, and unaware that there was an interest in fine art in his new home. Focusing on his work, this talk will show how de Kooning’s early experiences in the United States shaped him and his artistic development, and how his hybrid European-American identity marked him and his work as distinct from his contemporaries. Stephen Mack is Project Manager of the Willem de Kooning Catalogue Raisonné. For over 8 years, he was a researcher on the Revised Catalogue Raisonné of Yves Tanguy’s Paintings, Gouaches, and Objects, then under preparation by The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Stephen received his PhD in art history from Rutgers University in 2020 writing his dissertation about roughness and non finito in fifteenth-century Italian sculpture from Donatello to Michelangelo. The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, December 14 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are appreciated. Registration is required. In celebration of the centennial of Chaim Gross's immigration to the United States, the Foundation is focusing our programming on illuminating the stories of artists and immigrants in the collection. Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.