“Willem de Kooning at work”: the largest de Kooning exhibition in Europe in more than 40 years opens on Friday at the Rijksmuseum

A century after he left Rotterdam for New York, Willem de Kooning returns symbolically to his homeland: on Friday, 9 October, “Willem de Kooning at work” opens at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the artist’s largest retrospective in Europe in more than four decades. The exhibition brings over 120 works — drawings, paintings and sculptures — and will remain open until 17 January 2027, as the Rijksmuseum announces.

At the heart of the exhibition stands drawing — not as a preliminary stage, but as the engine of de Kooning’s creative process. Across more than 65 years of work, from his first drawings as a student to quick charcoal sketches, the visitor follows the artist sketching, experimenting, correcting and continually reinventing his approach — “I have to change to stay the same,” as de Kooning himself said in 1981.

The exhibition, realised in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago and The Willem de Kooning Foundation in New York, brings together rare drawings from private collections with some of the artist’s most famous works, including “Excavation” (1950) and “Pink Angels” (around 1945). The strongest moment of the presentation will be in the Gallery of Honour, where the two iconic paintings “Woman I” (1950–1952) and “Woman and Bicycle” (1952–1953) will be exhibited next to Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” — a dialogue between Dutch masters across the centuries.

De Kooning (1904–1997), born and raised in Rotterdam, left for America in 1926 and became one of the key figures of the New York School, refusing any rigid stylistic categorisation. The exhibition is accompanied by a new catalogue with the latest research on the artist’s drawings, published by the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as an audio tour and a drawing workshop at the museum’s Teekenschool.