Although Willem DeKooning was born in Hollond in 1904, he moved to the United States in the 1920s and became a key player in the New York school of art in the 1950s and a pioneer in Abstract Expressionism. As an action painter, he tried to capture a sense of energy and emotion in his work. In doing so, he alternated between abstract and figural painting. While much of his work resembles the total abstraction of painters like Jackson Pollock, his best pieces combine the chaos of expressionism with more traditional forms. As in "Woman I," the human figure is visible, but it is disintegrating into a chaotic blend of colors and textures. It was through paintings like these that DeKooning became a leader of the Abstract Expressionist movement. By blending traditional forms with a sense of ambiguity, he moved beyond the constraints of art history and opened the door for new methods of expression. What was his motivation for this experiment with Abstract Expressionism? As Willem DeKooning explained, "Ambiguity prevails in an art and in an age where nothing is certain but self-consciousness."
-Aaron Krall (Tansey, Richard G. Art through the Ages, Vol. II. Seventh Edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1980.)
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