Woman IV, 1952–1953. Willem de Kooning. Oil, enamel, and charcoal on canvas. Gift of William Inge. © 2023 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
In Woman IV a figural form, frontal and iconic, fills the surface of the canvas. The woman has enormous arms and breasts, bulging eyes and appears to either grin or grimace. Painted in intense and garish colors, she shifts, disassembles, reassembles and merges into a field of painterly brushstrokes. Dramatic brushwork, overpainting, scrapes and scumbles create a myriad of layered effects that set the canvas in motion and record the dynamic painting process.
De Kooning identified the complex fusion of references present in Woman IV: Venus, the nude, ancient fertility goddesses, Mesopotamian idols, contemporary women, the pin-up of the early 1950s and even the abstract forces of nature.
Fully aware of the ambiguity of form and content in his paintings, he observed: "Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash." De Kooning's Women are never definitively interpreted. Instead, they remain open, inviting speculation, while suggesting the artist's intense engagement with the concept of woman.
