When Willem de Kooning visited Italy for the first time, in 1959, he hadn’t left the U.S. since he got there, in 1926, a 22-year-old stowaway from Rotterdam. By 1959, he was famous, and told Time magazine, “I’m selling my own image now.” During his four months in Rome, De Kooning met Alberto Burri and Cy Twombly, and traipsed around the Roman relics and Renaissance marvels. His new friends and the city’s classicism would be major sources of inspiration. De Kooning returned a decade later, in 1969, to work in Herzl Emmanuel’s studio, where he made 13 clay figures that were then cast in bronze. This exhibition explores Italy’s influence on the artist. —Elena Clavarino