Painting - Willem de Kooning, 1948
From MoMA:
De Kooning used oil and enamel sign paint to make this work. With tracing paper he transferred segments of figurative drawings to the canvas, then applied layers of paint. “Even abstract shapes must have a likeness,” he said, and these black forms bounded by white vaguely resemble human figures and inanimate objects. The paint drips, bleeds, congeals, and dissolves into delicate streaks, resulting in a densely packed painting composed with a great economy of means.
Bare Tree Trunks with Snow - Georgia O’Keeffe, 1946
From the Dallas Museum of Art:
Taking winter-stripped trees in upstate New York as her subject, Georgia O’Keeffe simplified what she saw until what is left in this painting is an exploration of shape and color. Throughout her career, O’Keeffe united abstraction with an abiding interest in nature, creating signature, close-up images of natural forms. Nearly twenty years after her death at age ninety-nine, O’Keeffe remains one of the most popular artists of the 20th century, both for her artwork and for her carefully crafted persona as self-reliant icon of the American Southwest.
