Willem de Kooning

Known for: Abstract Expressionism; the Women series (1950–53)

Willem de Kooning arrived in New York from Rotterdam as a stowaway in 1926 and became a central figure in Abstract Expressionism through his large-scale paintings of the late 1940s and the Women series of the early 1950s, in which aggressive gestural painting and figurative imagery collided. His late paintings, made during the early stages of Alzheimer's disease in the 1980s, are characterized by a fluid, linear grace that surprised critics who had expected deterioration. He continued painting until near the end of his life.