The 1950s were a time of turmoil for Beck, who started the decade as a solid practitioner of Abstract Expressionist painting, having studied with Robert Motherwell and other adherents of the so-called New York School. However, as the 50s progressed, Beck began to question her allegiance to non-objective modes, and figures began to stealthily emerge in her paintings. At the same time, she was drawing furiously, especially nudes and full-length figures. By the late 1950s, she had come to some measure of self-acceptance of her transgressive move away from abstraction, resolute devoting herself to the fertility of her newfound figurative mode.