Exhibitions

Willem de Kooning Drawing

Chicago, United States

Before de Kooning exploded onto canvas, he was thinking through the line. This exhibition shows drawing not as preparation — but as the engine of his whole restless art.

Untitled [man and woman], about 1947–48 Willem de Kooning

Image credit

Untitled [man and woman], about 1947–48 Willem de Kooning Private collection. © 2026 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo courtesy of TAJAN

Meet the artist

The Movement

Abstract Expressionism, Drawing, Expressionism, Figurative, Figurative Expressionism

ArtLovers Tip

Stand close to the paper and look for hesitation. The beauty of de Kooning’s drawings is not perfection, but the visible act of searching — line by line, mark by mark, until the figure almost appears, almost disappears, and keeps moving.

Exhibition Highlights - What you'll see

De Kooning is usually remembered as one of the giants of Abstract Expressionist painting, but this exhibition shifts the focus to drawing as a central force in his practice. It follows how works on paper shaped his movement between body, gesture, abstraction and image-making across decades.

Willem de Kooning Drawing is presented as the first major exhibition devoted to the full range of de Kooning’s drawing practice. It brings together more than 200 works across seven decades, showing how paper became a space for experiment, speed, doubt, repetition and discovery.

You’re watching:

  • Drawings that reveal the artist thinking in real time
  • Lines moving between figure and abstraction
  • Studies, sketches and works on paper that connect to major paintings
  • A practice where erasing, revising and restarting are part of the image
  • The intimate side of an artist often associated with large, physical canvases
  • A dialogue between drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking

The exhibition makes de Kooning feel less like a fixed “master” and more like an artist constantly testing what an image could become.

Worth the trip

Yes — essential if you love modern art, drawing, process or Abstract Expressionism.

This show matters because it reframes de Kooning from the inside out. Instead of beginning with the famous paintings, it asks you to look at the place where forms are unstable, bodies appear and disappear, and abstraction is still being invented.

The Art Institute of Chicago has not had a solo de Kooning exhibition for more than fifty years, and this show gives rare visibility to drawings that are often less accessible than the paintings.

How to experience it

Don’t treat the drawings as “studies” only — look at them as complete moments of thought.

Follow the line: where does it become a body, a gesture, a space, a rhythm?

Notice erasures and changes; they are part of de Kooning’s intelligence.

Compare drawings with paintings or sculptures when they appear nearby.

Let the works feel unfinished — that instability is the point.

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