The historic East Hampton cottage and studio that once belonged to Elaine de Kooning, the painter and wife of artist Willem de Kooning, was bought last week by the New York lawyer Amy Arentowicz for $545,000 (down from the original asking price of $650,000).
Arentowicz said her purchase was influenced by the house’s “amazing history”: Elaine lived in the two-bedroom, 1,500-sq. ft property at 14 Sandra Drive and used it as her studio until 1976, when she reconciled with Willem and helped him get sober. The artist Lee Krasner was also rumoured to have used the cottage as a studio at one time.
An amateur artist herself, Arentowicz studied fresco restoration in Florence before she became a senior vice president and in-house counsel at Related Companies, the firm behind the massive Hudson Yards redevelopment project on the far west side of Manhattan. But her approach to renovating the cottage will be far less drastic: “I intend to keep the house as it is and work on providing some needed structural updates,” she says. “I am definitely going to use the studio to paint—this was the main driver in my purchasing the home.”
Corcoran’s Vanessa Mothes and Bryan Midlam brokered the deal.
