Curated by Bernhard Mendes Bürgi

The ’60s and ’70s were not happy years for Willem de Kooning. At the height of his fame, the aging painter often disappeared for days at a time on drinking binges that would culminate in hospital stays. Even good days often began with a bottle of J&B. Was the “blubbery” style of those years a relative low point, a long prequel to the (now much better known) abstractions of the “dry” ’80s? Or do its slovenly, lascivious images of women and emulsified landscapes represent de Kooning’s true “late style,” before the onset of Alzheimer’s? With about forty major works made between 1960 and 1980, curator Bernhard Mendes Bürgi gives European audiences a chance to assess the artist’s most dissipated, least prolific decades.

— Alexi Worth