Like all the works from the Women series, it caused a lot of controversy. The artist’s nervous and aggressive manner, combined with such, to put it mildly, non-standard depiction of female nakedness, puzzled and frightened the public.
David Mr. Geffen acquired it in 1994 from a Tehran Museum in a quiet trade with the help of Doris Ammann, a Zurich dealer, on the tarmac of the Vienna airport. In return, Iran obtained the remnants of a precious 16th-century painted manuscript detailing the ascension of Shah Tahmasp of Persia to the throne.
In November 2006, the painting was sold by David Geffen to billionaire Steven A. Cohen for $137.5 million, making it the second most expensive painting ever sold. Mr. Cohen bought the 1952-53 oil on canvas, “Woman III,” directly from the entertainment magnate and mega-collector David Geffen.
Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam in Holland. When he was 5 years old, his parents divorced. From then on, De Kooning was raised by his mother and stepfather. From a young age De Kooning showed a keen interest in painting, and when he was a teenager, his parents arranged for him to attend the Rotterdam Fine Arts Academy, where he studied for over 7 years.
At the age of 22, De Kooning stowed away on a ship bound to the US, settling first in New Jersey. After 3 years of working as a house painter and decorator, he had earned enough to establish a small studio in Manhattan.
The female figure was a theme to which de Kooning returned repeatedly. He began painting women regularly in the early 1940s and did so again later in that decade and more seriously in the 1950s. Woman III is one of a series of six paintings by de Kooning done between 1951 and 1953 in which the central theme was a woman.
Woman III by Willem de Kooning
