Richard Diebenkorn
Born – Portland, USA 1922
Died – Portland, USA 1993
Richard Diebenkorn, like painter Robert Motherwell, swam calmly against the tide of Abstract Expressionism that saturated the American art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. The contemporary fascination with popular culture also left Diebenkorn’s art unscathed. The subtle nuances of the European Modernist movement, however, infused his work. Sensitivity and compositional structure, informed by emotional and sensual concerns, infiltrated his paintings. Albuquerque II was produced shortly before Diebenkorn radically changed direction toward figuration. This beautiful abstract is at once soft and hard, elegantly composed and grounded by the rich ultramarine wedge near the base. The visible element of drawing in the painting was realized more overtly in his subsequent representational style, which influenced successive generations of Californian artists. Diebenkorn’s respect for the Modernists – Henri Matisse in particular – and the bold canvases of the colour-field painters, Clifford Still and Barnett Newman for example, resulted in later canvases that have much in common with the Symbolic tradition of equivalents; sensation and harmony are described in terms of colour, line and form.
Masterpieces:
- City Scape I
- Ocean Park No. 66
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About richard diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series
Sarah Bancroft
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Richard Diebenkorn: Revised and Expanded
Gerald Nordland
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The Art of Richard Diebenkorn
Jane Livingston
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