My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

Some of these paintings also appeared to reference early Mesopotamian / Akkadian works with the large eyes and squarely chiseled bodies. Estate
Since 1989 De Kooning's oeuvre was controlled primarily by sculptor Lisa de Kooning his only child; their attorney John Eastman the son of de Kooning’s longtime attorney Lee Eastman; and John Silberman an attorney who represented Lisa and Eastman in their court application to be appointed as de Kooning’s conservators and later represented his estate. From the late 1950s to the early 1960s De Kooning entered a new phase of nearly pure abstractions more related to landscape than to the human figure.

Willem de Kooning (April 24 1904 – March 19 1997) was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam the Netherlands. Other painters in this group included Jackson Pollock Elaine de Kooning Lee Krasner Franz Kline Arshile Gorky Mark Rothko Hans Hofmann Adolph Gottlieb Robert Motherwell Philip Guston and Clyfford Still.