Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993) was an American painter. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His later work (best known as the Ocean Park paintings) were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim.
Question: what would an artist have to do to become famous and significant without being involved in the New York art world? Answer: paint like Richard Diebenkorn, the American painter who, through his seductive colors and surfaces and exquisite sense of balance between planes - and between figuration and abstraction - came to define the California school of Abstract Expressionism during the early 1950s. Although he moved back and forth between making abstract and figural paintings throughout his career, his version of Abstract Expressionism became an important counterpart to the more well-known brand of the movement popularized by such New York artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. During the 1950s through the 1960s he was noted for developing a unique form of Northern California realism, now referred to as the Bay Area Figurative School.
Although Richard Diebenkorn was a great student and teacher of art, he did not, in the end, contribute in any revolutionary way to the narrative of art history. However, it is significant that he was a contemporary artist who could successfully combine such diverse influences as Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and the whole history of European "belle peinture" ("beautiful painting").
The truth is that Diebenkorn, in addition to being a more private than public individual and not self-aggrandizing, was fundamentally a West Coast artist - influenced by his New Mexico and California environments. These personal traits also found expression in his ability to create a kind of humanized abstraction, either through the direct use of the human figure within an abstracted setting or through the delicacy and personal expressivity of the touch of his brush.
One of the most significant and unusual features of his art was the fluidity with which he could change styles between abstraction and figuration, observing the structure and order both in nature and on the canvas. His works exquisitely reconcile his perception of the natural environment with his conception of the created entity on the canvas.
Question: what would an artist have to do to become famous and significant without being involved in the New York art world? Answer: paint like Richard Diebenkorn, the American painter who, through his seductive colors and surfaces and exquisite sense of balance between planes - and between figuration and abstraction - came to define the California school of Abstract Expressionism during the early 1950s. Although he moved back and forth between making abstract and figural paintings throughout his career, his version of Abstract Expressionism became an important counterpart to the more well-known brand of the movement popularized by such New York artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. During the 1950s through the 1960s he was noted for developing a unique form of Northern California realism, now referred to as the Bay Area Figurative School.
Although Richard Diebenkorn was a great student and teacher of art, he did not, in the end, contribute in any revolutionary way to the narrative of art history. However, it is significant that he was a contemporary artist who could successfully combine such diverse influences as Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and the whole history of European "belle peinture" ("beautiful painting").
The truth is that Diebenkorn, in addition to being a more private than public individual and not self-aggrandizing, was fundamentally a West Coast artist - influenced by his New Mexico and California environments. These personal traits also found expression in his ability to create a kind of humanized abstraction, either through the direct use of the human figure within an abstracted setting or through the delicacy and personal expressivity of the touch of his brush.
One of the most significant and unusual features of his art was the fluidity with which he could change styles between abstraction and figuration, observing the structure and order both in nature and on the canvas. His works exquisitely reconcile his perception of the natural environment with his conception of the created entity on the canvas.
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| Mr Richard Diebenkorn |
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| 1943, Untitled from Sketchbook #17, page 55 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1943, Untitled" from Sketchbook #10, page 13 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1943, Untitled © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1947-48, Untitled © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1948, Untitled (Sausalito #3) © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1950-53, Untitled © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1951, Albuquerque 11 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1952, Alberquerque 9 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1952-53, Untitled © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1953, Urbana #2 (The Archer) © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1953, Urbana No. 4 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1954, Berkeley No. 13 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1954, Berkeley No. 33 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1955, Berkeley N0. 52 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1955, Berkeley No. 57 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1955, Berkley No. 46 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1955, Still Life with Orange Peel © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1956, Coffee © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1956, Girl on a Terrace © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1957, Girl Looking at Landscape © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1957, Interior with view of ocean © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1958, E.T. in a Hat © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1958, Woman in porch © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1958, Woman in Profile © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1959, coffee © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1959, Figure on a Porch © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1959, Horizon Ocean View © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1960, Girl with Plant © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1960, Woman with Newspaper © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1962, Interior with Doorway © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1963, Cityscape #1 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1963, Detail from Cityscape #1 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1963, Ingleside © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1963, Knife and glass © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1963, Untitled (Tomato & Knife) © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1964, Untitled © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1965, Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1966 #18 (Phyllis in striped chair) © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1966, Invented Landscape © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1966, Untitled (Yellow Collage) © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1967, Large Woman © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1967, Window © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1969, Ocean Park #24 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1970, Ocean Park #22 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1972, Ocean Park #54 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1975, Ocean Park #79 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1975, Ocean Park #87 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1975, Ocean Park No. 79 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1976, Ocean Park No. 94 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| 1984, Untitled (Ocean Park) © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| Early sketch Untitled Seated Woman in Directors Chair 1 © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| Untitled from drawings portfolio © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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| Untitled from drawings portfolio © 2017, Richard Diebenkorn Foundation |
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