Willem de Kooning

As an action painter, he tried to capture a sense of energy and emotion in his work. In doing so, he alternated between abstract and figural painting.

While much of his work resembles the total abstraction of painters like Jackson Pollock, his best pieces combine the chaos of expressionism with more traditional forms. 

By blending traditional forms with a sense of ambiguity, he moved beyond the constraints of art history and opened the door for new methods of expression.

What was his motivation for this experiment with Abstract Expressionism? As Willem DeKooning explained, "Ambiguity prevails in an art and in an age where nothing is certain but self-consciousness."