I got to see a few Willem de Kooning paintings at The Nelson in Kansas City decades ago and they left an impression on me. I loved the Woman Series but fell in love with the marks and expressions regardless of the subject matter.
By 1946, de Kooning had begun a series of black and white paintings, which he would continue into 1949. During this period he had his first one-man show at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1948 consisting largely of black and white works, although a few pieces have passages of bright color. De Kooning's black paintings are important to the history of abstract expressionism owing to their densely impacted forms, their mixed media, and their technique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning