Early Life and Education
She was born Elaine Marie Catherine Fried in 1918 (she later gave her birth year as 1920) in Brooklyn, New York. The oldest of four children born to Charles Frank Fried and Mary Ellen O'Brien Fried, she was raised in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. Her artistic sensibility was encouraged by her mother, who took her to museums and taught her to draw what she saw. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, then brief studies at Hunter College in New York City, in 1937 she attended the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1938 she went on to study at the American Artists School in New York City.
She stated:
A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.
Read more about this topic: Elaine De Kooning
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