De Kooning's Italian sojourns explored in Venice exhibition

The Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice presents 'Willem de Kooning e l'Italia', the first exhibition to examine the profound influence of the artist's two stays in Italy on his work. The show brings together around 75 works from the late 1950s to the 1980s, including drawings, paintings, and sculptures. De Kooning spent four months in Rome in 1959, where he encountered classical Italian art and contemporary Italian artists, producing experimental black-and-white works on paper. He returned in 1969, which prompted his turn to sculpture. The exhibition highlights key paintings such as 'Screams of Children Come from Seagulls' (1975), 'A Tree in Naples', 'Door to the River', and 'Villa Borghese' (1960), shown together for the first time. It also features sculptures like 'Clamdigger' (1972), inspired by clam diggers on the beach near his Long Island studio. The show traces de Kooning's oscillation between abstraction and figuration, including works from his controversial 'Women' series and 'Red Man with Moustache' (1971), which echoes Francis Bacon's distorted figures.