Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, authors of the recent best-seller de Kooning: An American Master published by Alfred A. Knopf, will appear at SITE Santa Fe and speak about their collaboration, the first major biography of de Kooning which captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture.

Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as hundreds of interviews, the book is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master.

Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true “painter’s painter” whose protean work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of Abstract Expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.

Mark Stevens is the art critic for New York magazine. He has also been the art critic for The New Republic and Newsweek and has written for such publications as Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York City.

Annalyn Swan has been a writer at Time and an award-winning music critic and senior arts editor at Newsweek. She has written for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and New York magazine. She lives in New York City.