Willem de Kooning starts painting Woman I, initiating the intense, extended process that would catalyze his early-1950s “Woman” sequence and sharpen his high-profile tension between abstraction and figuration.
After an open letter protesting the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s jury/exhibition policies appears in the press, the ensuing controversy (and later group photo) helps consolidate public attention around New York–based abstraction and its leading figures, including de Kooning.
After two years of revisions, scraping, and repainting, de Kooning brings Woman I to completion (dated 1950–52), establishing the scale and confrontational iconography that would define the series’ public impact.
De Kooning paints Woman, II (1952), extending the “Woman” motif into a related but distinct canvas that would later enter MoMA as a major companion work to Woman I.
De Kooning works on Two Women with Still Life (1950–52), a closely related “Woman”-theme work (in pastel) that evidences his practice of moving between media while developing the aggressive figure/ground interplay characteristic of the series.
De Kooning completes Woman III (1953), one of the six canonical paintings associated with the early-1950s “Women,” later becoming one of the best-known works from the group through its unusual collecting history and high-profile private ownership.
De Kooning completes Woman V (1953), continuing the series’ charged mix of slashing brushwork and emblematic femininity—an approach that became central to debates about figuration within Abstract Expressionism.
De Kooning completes Woman VI (1953) and it is first displayed in the Sidney Janis Gallery context with the other “Women,” marking the culminating edge of the 1948–53 “Woman” sequence before his mid-1950s shift toward other subjects.
The Museum of Modern Art acquires Woman I (object no. 478.1953), institutionalizing the series’ significance and quickly positioning the painting as a cornerstone of postwar American art in a leading museum collection.
Art critic Thomas B. Hess publishes an Art News piece chronicling de Kooning’s struggle with Woman I, helping frame the work (and the broader “Women”) as a hard-won, process-driven achievement rather than a simple return to representation.
De Kooning’s first show at the Sidney Janis Gallery opens, presenting six large “Woman” oil paintings in one room and related drawings/pastels in another—an exhibition widely credited with making the “Woman” series a flashpoint in early-1950s American art.
MoMA includes Woman I in its “XXVth Anniversary Exhibition: Paintings from the Museum Collection,” an early museum-context validation that helped define the painting’s canonical status soon after its acquisition.
Willem de Kooning's Woman series (1948–1953)
