Sotheby’s – Head of contemporary Art, David Galperin reflects upon how Willem De Kooning makes the impossible possible in Collage (1950) one of De Kooning’s most pivotal abstract paintings, which has been in the private hands for more than seven decades. Undoubtedly, Collage is a key painting within De Kooning’s color abstraction series, marking the beginning of a style that would define his work for decades to come.

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried.