Montauk Highway, 1958

Willem de Kooning

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift from the Michael and Dorothy Blankfort Collection in honor of the museum's 25th anniversary (M.90.13)

Oil and combined media on heavy paper mounted to canvas, 59 x 48 in. Willem de Kooning, who immigrated to New York City from Rotterdam in 1926, perpetually blurred the boundaries between abstract and representational modes. From 1957 to 1961, de Kooning spent more time in Long Island, away from Manhattan. During this period, he painted a number of suburban parkway landscapes. De Kooning relished the transformation of the terrain from urban to open highway—expanses of concrete, broad fields, and sky—and rendered the experience here in rapid, broad strokes.

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