Elaine de Kooning's Kaldis with Scarves (1969) portrays Aristodimos Kaldis, the Greek-American painter who became one of her favorite subjects. Portraiture was the center of her Abstract Expressionist practice, and she returned to Kaldis repeatedly from the late 1960s into the 1970s. More than an accurate likeness, she was after a sitter's bearing.

At sixty by forty-eight inches, the canvas matches its subject — Kaldis was a larger-than-life presence in the New York art world. He sits cross-legged, his chest a riot of scarves in red, cobalt, yellow, and green laid down in broad, wet strokes. His face is built from cool grays and blues, the eyes deep-set under heavy dark brows, while sage and cream sweep in behind him. De Kooning leaves his contours open, letting the background push into his coat and his shoulder run out into the air, so he seems to breathe on the canvas.

The painting comes from the Estate of Elaine de Kooning and has been exhibited three times, most recently at the Amarillo Museum of Art in 2021. The Asheville Art Museum holds her Portrait of Aristodimos Kaldis (1976, charcoal on paper), evidence of how long he held her interest, and Betty Jean Thiebaud's 1976 film Elaine de Kooning Paints a Portrait records her at work on him. Few of her portraits combine this scale, this color, and this depth of acquaintance.