Happy Birthday, Elaine de Kooning

Happy Birthday to Elaine de Kooning, the critic, writer, and artist who was married to Willem de Kooning and largely responsible for the propulsion of his career. In the male-dominated art world of the 1940s and ’50s, Elaine fought to promote her husband’s art; it wasn’t until the mid '70s that she began to receive recognition as an artist in her own right. When asked how it felt to have lived in her husband’s shadow, she replied: “I lived in his light.”