The Wave

Willem de Kooning's work is based in improvisation and free gesture. Here, an elegant line defines what could be read as a landscape, a figure, or simply a series of looping forms. Throughout his career, the artist shifted between representational and abstract modes of expression. "Art should not have to be a certain way," he once said. "It is no use worrying about being related to something it is impossible not to be related to."

Born in the Netherlands, de Kooning came to the United States in 1926 without a passport or visa. Arriving as an academically trained commercial artist, he went on to become a defining figure of abstract painting in New York.