The Museum of Modern Art has mounted a retrospective of the works of Willem de Kooning that has had the art world in a state of anticipation for several months.

According to John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus at MoMA, “The importance of Willem de Kooning as one of the very foremost artists of the New York School is widely accepted, as is his revolutionary importance to modern art as a whole. Far less well understood is what his artistic career actually comprised in its almost seven decades of development. The exhibition demonstrates how de Kooning never followed any single, narrowly defined path, repudiating the modernist view of art as developing towards an increasingly refined, allover abstraction to find continuity in continual change.”

Your author doubts that the modernist view dictates any such thing, but the exhibition itself promises to be a knockout. “Representing nearly every type of work de Kooning made, in both technique and subject matter, this retrospective, which covers the years from 1916-17 to 1987, includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints,” says the museum. “Among the works on view are the artist’s most famous, landmark paintings—Pink Angels (c. 1945), Excavation (1950), and the celebrated third Woman series (1950-53)—plus in-depth presentations of all his most important series, ranging from his figurative paintings of the early 1940s to the breakthrough black-and-white compositions of 1948-49, and from the urban abstractions of the mid 1950s to the artist’s return to figuration in the 1960s, as well as the large gestural abstractions of the following decade. Also included is de Kooning’s famous yet rarely seen theatrical backdrop, the 17-foot-square Labyrinth (1946).”

“De Kooning: A Retrospective” runs through January 9, 2012 at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-708-9400, moma.org.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.