Focus on Woman VI and explore the abstract.
Woman VI is a 1953 abstract work of art painted by Willem de Kooning and first displayed at the Sidney Janis Gallery in Manhattan. Since the 1955 Carnegie International Exhibition, Woman VI has been on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art as part of the Postwar Abstraction collection. The Woman paintings of the early 1950s are widely considered to be de Kooning’s most important works for their significance to postwar American cultural history and social events, such as the mid-century Feminist Movements. Many of the paintings are speculated to be abstracted portraits of Marilyn Monroe.  Woman VI is notable within the series for its brighter palette of green and red paint employed in larger fields of color.  
As decolonization spread throughout the globe, the Cold War powers offered competing models for economic and political modernization, as well as models for the art world. The reasons why abstract expressionism took place in the 1950s are still a matter of debate. However, the political limitation was one of the definite reasons. After World War II, the political climate did not tolerate the social pretests of these painters anymore. The McCarthy era after World War II was a time of artistic censorship in the United States, but, if the subject matter were totally abstract, then it would be seen as apolitical, and, therefore, safe. The wartime shifted the artists’ perspectives of the art world from representational, single-style painting to an abstract, combination of multiple styles painting. For example, Thomas B. Hess, the longtime executive editor of ARTnews, pointed out about de Kooning’s works that"…Similar themes of Pompeian color - blue, pink, ochre, alluding to the Boscoreale frescoes in the Metropolitan as well as to the Broadway neon - similar hooking forms and flickering contours, tie the works so closely together that the whole idea of a ‘breakthrough’ seems a bit juvenile - like an advertising agency’s gimmick to sell History."Boscoreale frescoes used to be an important painting technique in Roman art. Hess is explaining that Abstract Expressionism is a "breakthrough" because it is a style that combines both European art colors and American abstract forms. Considering De Kooning’s Dutch background, his paintings actually combined more than three styles. De Kooning is an important artist to the museum because he brought his craft a rigorous European academic training and close familiarity with the past art of past that set him apart from many of his American contemporaries.
Sidney Janis Gallery modernization Willem de Kooning Cold War Thomas B. Hess decolonization Sidney Janis Marilyn Monroe McCarthy era ARTnews Carnegie International Carnegie Museum of Art Carnegie International Exhibition World War II