Focus on Woman-Ochre and analyze the abstract.
Woman-Ochre is a 1955 abstract expressionist oil painting by Dutch/American artist Willem de Kooning, part of his Woman series from that period. It was controversial in its day, like the other paintings in the series, for its explicit use of figures, which Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists considered a betrayal of the movement's ideal of pure, non-representational painting. Feminists also considered the works misogynistic, suggesting violent impulses toward the women depicted.
Several years after it was completed, a wealthy collector from the Eastern United States bought it and later donated it to the new University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) in Tucson, where he frequently vacationed, with the stipulation that the museum could not ever sell or give it away, even as the value of other de Kooning paintings from that era rose to over $100 million in the early 21st century; however the stipulation did not prevent the museum from loaning it to traveling exhibits, and it went with several, as far away as Eastern Europe.
In 1985 it was stolen from the museum. Investigators believed the thieves were a couple who had visited the museum briefly on the day after Thanksgiving Day that year, as it was found to have been cut from its frame shortly after they left. Sketches were circulated in an effort to identify them, but no leads turned up until it was recovered 32 years later after it was offered for sale at a New Mexico antique store, where it had been part of the estate of Jerry and Rita Alter, two former New York City public school teachers who had retired to the area. Visitors to the store speculated that the work was a de Kooning, and then the proprietor found a picture of the missing painting on the Internet. He contacted museum staff, who were able to provisionally authenticate it, and it was returned to Tucson. The museum did not put it back on exhibit, except for one day before sending it to the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, and raised funds to restore and repair it.  After delays resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, it was finished in 2022. The J. Paul Getty Museum is currently exhibiting it before the painting's return to Tucson.
It has not been determined who stole the painting. Suspicion has fallen on the Alters, who were photographed at a family Thanksgiving dinner in Tucson the night before the theft, and displayed it in their house in a manner that only they were likely to have seen during their lifetimes. They also did bear a slight resemblance to the couple in the sketches, and Jerome Alter later wrote a book of stories in which two characters carry out a similar theft of a museum piece to reserve for their own exclusive enjoyment. The living relatives of the Alters believe it is possible that they bought the painting from a third party, entirely unaware of its provenance.
Arizona New Mexico Getty Conservation Institute Willem de Kooning abstract expressionist Feminists provenance Los Angeles misogynistic traveling exhibit use of figures abstract Sketches Eastern Europe Tucson stolen violent impulses toward the women COVID-19 pandemic Thanksgiving Day restore collector American Thanksgiving Dutch J. Paul Getty Museum New York City public school teachers University of Arizona Ochre Jackson Pollock antique Eastern United States left University of Arizona Museum of Art oil painting estate