Focusing on Willem de Kooning, this is one of an illustrated series which provides accounts of the lives of individual artists, professional and personal anecdotes, and concise definitions of cultural and social movements that shaped their work. After voyaging from the Netherlands to the United States as a stowaway at the age of 22, de Kooning emerged as one of the major figures of modern art. The book examines his images of strange women's faces, his vivid colours, and his lyrical later works, created as he drifted into Alzheimer's disease.