How This De Kooning Painting Feels Like It’s Moving | Sotheby’s

Why It Matters

The painting exemplifies how Duning’s late‑stage evolution merged environment, color, and sculptural motifs, reinforcing his market value and influencing contemporary abstract practice.

Key Takeaways

• Duning painted "Untitled #3" in 1975, his 70s peak.
• East Hampton’s light and nature inspired his vibrant palette.
• Large brushstrokes create a liquid, wet‑look surface that dazzles.
• Sculptural influences appear as abstracted female forms within canvas.
• The work remained in private hands for two decades.

Summary

The Sotheby’s video spotlights William Duning’s 1975 canvas Untitled #3, a hallmark of his late‑career output. At seventy‑plus, the American abstract expressionist was already an established master, yet he continued to push his visual language.

The film explains how Duning’s relocation to East Hampton infused his work with luminous, natural light. He employed an electric palette—primrose pinks, sky blues, shamrock greens, coral reds—applied in sweeping, liquid brushstrokes that make the surface appear freshly wet.

References to his recent foray into sculpture, especially the iconic “Clam Digger,” surface as abstracted female silhouettes within the composition. Critics note the painting’s “grand synthesis” of landscape, figure, and sculptural form, creating a radiant, joyous effect.

For collectors, the piece’s rarity—held in a private collection for nearly twenty years—underscores the market’s appetite for Duning’s 1970s masterpieces, which command premium prices and signal the enduring relevance of his late‑period innovations.

Original Description

By the mid-1970s, Willem de Kooning had already secured his place in art history. Yet Untitled III (1975) reveals an artist still pushing forward—toward a language that feels lighter, more fluid, and unexpectedly radiant. Painted after his move to East Hampton, the work channels the surrounding landscape—its light, water, and atmosphere—into sweeping, liquid gestures. Here, de Kooning distills decades of experimentation into something that feels both resolved and entirely new.

Hints of the human figure emerge and dissolve within these luminous strokes, echoing motifs that had defined his practice for years while opening the door to something freer and more intuitive. The result is a painting that seems almost in motion—its surface glistening, as if still wet. Untitled III stands as a powerful testament to late-career reinvention, where mastery gives way to a new kind of freedom.

Untitled III (1975) will be offered in Sotheby’s Now & Contemporary Evening Auction, presented by CELINE, taking place live in New York on 14 May 2026.

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