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WILLEM DE KOONING - 1904-1997 Born in 1904 in Rotterdam, where his father Leendert de Knooning and mother Cornelia Nobel, reputedly a woman of fearsome toughness, ran a sailors' bar. He studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts in the 1920s
He moved to the United States in 1926, soon settling in New York City. Along with contemporaries Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, he first came to notice in the late 1940s as one of the pioneers of a style that would become known as Abstract Expressionism, a movement that brought American art at that time to the forefront of international attention. and when he died at the age of 92 he was regarded as the last of the abstract expressionist's. Some of his early works ,sold in the art boom of the 1980's, fetched up to $20 million but his latter work done during the 80's are a poor imitation of the work of a once great artist. He went through huge bouts of alcoholism and was assisted with his paintings in everything but the actual brush strokes. Needless to say these works are not as highly regarded. painting shown-"Untitled II" 1986