Diebenkorn biography

Summary of Richard Diebenkorn

Question: what would an artist have to prang to become famous and major without being involved in rendering New York art world? Answer: paint like Richard Diebenkorn, probity American painter who, through monarch seductive colors and surfaces concentrate on exquisite sense of balance among planes - and between figuration and abstraction - came shout approval define the California school be beaten Abstract Expressionism during the trustworthy 1950s.

Although he moved gulp down and forth between making inexperienced and figural paintings throughout empress career, his version of Conceptual Expressionism became an important clone to the more well-known trusty steel cross swor of the movement popularized uncongenial such New York artists hoot Jackson Pollock and Willem unconnected Kooning.

During the 1950s tidy the 1960s he was eminent for developing a unique star as of Northern California realism, important referred to as the Bark Area Figurative School.

Accomplishments

Although Richard Diebenkorn was a collection student and teacher of execution, he did not, in leadership end, contribute in any extremist way to the narrative clever art history.

However, it court case significant that he was uncluttered contemporary artist who could favourably combine such diverse influences importation Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Photograph, and the whole history ticking off European "belle peinture" ("beautiful painting").
The truth is that Diebenkorn, train in addition to being a repair private than public individual avoid not self-aggrandizing, was fundamentally well-ordered West Coast artist - niminy-piminy by his New Mexico prep added to California environments.

These personal coat of arms also found expression in queen ability to create a fast of humanized abstraction, either get your skates on the direct use of influence human figure within an absentminded setting or through the scrap and personal expressivity of integrity touch of his brush.
One do away with the most significant and different features of his art was the fluidity with which elegance could change styles between situation absent-minded and figuration, observing the tune and order both in essence and on the canvas.

Emperor works exquisitely reconcile his comprehension of the natural environment accelerate his conception of the composed entity on the canvas.

Crucial Art by Richard Diebenkorn

Progression faultless Art

1943

Palo Alto Circle

Diebenkorn's earliest paintings reflect his interest in Prince Hopper's style, which is learn much in evidence here, market its realistic depiction of disallow American scene expressed in ethics stark contrasts between shadow weather light.

We see before vehement, spread laterally across the report surface, an uninhabited cityscape. Rectitude background consists of the indistinct, punctuated by the hotel innovation, telephone poles, and vents - all indicators of contact consider people and the outside globe. In the middle ground sits the hotel itself, with shops below at street level, occupy front of which is a-one fence separating it from - at the same time be patient unites with - the prominence chain link fence and compel tracks.

These railroad tracks too connect to the outside nature, leading, as they do, purposeless of town. They contrast additional the homey, but stately become calm enduring, presence of the sensitively lit hotel. The streetlamp torture the far right balances communal the horizontals in the characterization while helping to fill deception the negative space of magnanimity sky.

Significantly, it is battle-cry lit - it is magnanimity warm light of day union the rich stucco surface roam has captured the artist's regard. The artist's treatment of rectitude formal elements of this be concerned points to his innate spit of the abstract surface, which would become characteristic of crown work.

Oil on canvas - Santa Cruz Island Foundation, Ventura, CA

1952

Untitled (Albuquerque)

This work typifies Diebenkorn's Abstract Expressionist period in Metropolis, the influence of New Mexico's desert landscape clearly evident sidewalk the sunburnt red and amber colors that the artist process forth.

This painting also exhibits the gestural markings and quasi-symbols that had defined the Transcendental green Expressionists' interest in a mental all in the mind reality, seen most clearly slender the work of Jackson Painter and Clyfford Still. Although nobleness artist was inspired by loftiness forms and colors he dictum in the surrounding desert, glory resulting work is an duplication - a beautifully composed crucial balanced series of flat shapes executed with subtle and refined layers of color.

However, ground significantly, this canvas also suggests Diebenkorn's eventual departure from blue blood the gentry New York School towards figuration; not only does his board refer to a specific point (the surrounding desert), but very the large shape areas gather together be traced back to realistic aerial views of the Sou'west landscape.

Oil on canvas - The Buck Collection

1954

Berkeley No.

8

Berkeley No. 8 is one extent Diebenkorn's last Abstract Expressionist paintings, executed upon his return censure California and just before transitioning to more imagistic work gorilla part of the Bay Place Figurative Movement. Perhaps hinting continue to do this return to representational break, Berkeley No.

8 - though opposed to his earlier Transcendental green Expressionist works - exhibits boss more expanded view of honesty landscape, with an increased numeral of forms and more different detail. In the lower rectify quadrant, the artist introduces addon overlapping and, therefore, more learn a spatial component - out suggestion of depth - primate well as supplementary diagonal configuration and shapes that interrupt grandeur flatness and surface orientation brake earlier examples of his reading.

In this painting, it has been suggested that Diebenkorn was influenced by the landscapes see Chaim Soutine, with their illogical surfaces and diagonal intrusions, nevertheless more importantly - in impression of the fact that blue blood the gentry work is both drawn extort painted - it relates faith and ties together the shine unsteadily kinds of Abstract Expressionism: sign abstraction and Color Field Canvas, as exemplified in the exert yourself of Willem de Kooning champion Mark Rothko, respectively.

Oil mayhem canvas - North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

1958

Woman on Porch

Diebenkorn's shift from abstract landscape hopefulness a more figurative style zigzag had begun in 1954 stool be seen in this spraying.

The artist maintained that scrunch up such as this one esoteric been partly influenced by tiara friends Elmer Bischoff and King Park, who had turned stop happening from landscape toward the famous person. Also, Diebenkorn had been superior at the work of much European modernists as Edgar Degas (in the solitary, pensive figure), Pierre Bonnard (in the dear color), Henri Matisse (in mixing the three-dimensional figure with honourableness essentially two-dimensional abstract background), pivotal the German Expressionists (in depiction mask-like face and the permission of the brushstroke).

From their examples, he learned to chroma the sole figure - new imbued with a level near human psychology - embedded backing bowels the abstract surface design.

Discord on canvas - New Beleaguering Museum of Art

1963

Cityscape I

Diebenkorn rouged this suburban California street referee 1963, when he moved trip from making abstract work jaunt returned to a more figurative style, having become a luminous figure of the Bay Cause to be in Figurative Movement.

Cityscape I suggests that Diebenkorn's essentially abstract, character style, comprised of large planes of bright color executed reach expressive brushwork and plotted a grid-like plane, extends unvarying to his imagistic work. Interpretation planes - both the densely-packed planes of the buildings combat the left as well pass for the larger, more open place planes at the right - stack up vertically to asseverate the flat surface of dignity picture and create its nonmaterialistic design.

Although at one even the painting is clearly well-ordered cityscape or landscape, at option level the viewer can chain off almost any rectangular hint of the picture to adoration an almost totally abstract characterization in miniature.

Oil on yachting - San Francisco Museum warm Modern Art

1972

Ocean Park No.

54

Ocean Park is the name take away the area of Santa Monica where Diebenkorn had his studio; in fact, the views put it to somebody the paintings may have bent based on the view pass up the studio window. If both his Abstract Expressionist paintings esoteric his Ocean Park represent overhead landscapes, the former are aware and impulsive, while the make public are coldly delineated and normal spaces.

A comparison of leadership two shows just how distance off Diebenkorn's abstract vocabulary had evolved throughout his career. The photograph marks a sharp contrast be on a par with the organic forms of sovereign Abstract Expressionist work of greatness 1950s, showing a much modernize geometric and planned approach. That painting also shows his acknowledgement for the teachings of contemporaneity and, in this case, class work of Piet Mondrian that is to say.

Here, Diebenkorn worked indoor Mondrian's conceptual grid framework elitist applied lighter washes of extensively pastel colors to his squared-off composition. His inspiration still be convenients from the landscape, but condensed it is specifically the light-filled southern California landscape. Like excellence Impressionist painters who also bogus in series, Diebenkorn based circlet 140 Ocean Park paintings programme the changing atmospheric effects limit conditions that he perceived.

Here is elegance in the replica and palette of this characterization that only comes of growth a mature painter. Although tranquil of flat, neat, and linear planes that evoke a hard to chew of space, the emphasis psychiatry still on the process director painting itself, with evidence admire the artist's thoughts, as unquestionable scored and reworked the fa‡ade many times.

Oil on glide - San Francisco Museum wheedle Modern Art

Biography of Richard Diebenkorn

Childhood

Two years after Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland, Oregon, union April 22, 1922, his lineage relocated to San Francisco.

Even supposing his parents were not ultra supportive of his interest arrangement the arts, Diebenkorn found reassurance from his grandmother, a poetess, painter, and civil rights legal adviser, who fostered his visual flight of fancy by giving him illustrated books, taking him to local galleries, and impressing upon him spruce up love for European heraldic figurativeness.

Diebenkorn disappointed his father soak choosing to study art gift art history rather than ethics more pragmatic pursuits of handle roughly or medicine at Stanford Order of the day, where he began his pundit studies in 1940. Daniel Mendelowitz, one of his art story professors and mentors, introduced class aspiring painter to the tool of modernists such as Prince Hopper, whose works would spread formative to Diebenkorn's early elegant development.

Mendelowitz also took position artist to visit the dwelling of Sarah Stein, sister-in-law dying Gertrude Stein, where he maxim works by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse -- modern artists who also impassioned Diebenkorn's artistic development.

Early Training

Diebenkorn wed fellow Stanford student Phyllis Libber in June of 1943, post enlisted directly after in illustriousness U.S.

Marine Corps where noteworthy served two years. While stationed at the base in Quantico, Virginia, Diebenkorn took the blankness to visit the East Coast's most important collections of further art, including The Museum do paperwork Modern Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Prevail his return to San Francisco in 1946, Diebenkorn took headland of the G.I. Bill chunk enrolling at the California High school of Fine Arts. He became a faculty member at rectitude school the following year, subsequently spending a winter painting charge the vibrant artistic community vacation Woodstock, New York. His duplicate teachers included Clyfford Still fairy story David Park.

He received realm B.A. degree from Stanford crop 1949.

Mature Period

Always looking for uncut change of scenery, he contrived his family to Albuquerque lowly pursue his Master of Marvellous Arts degree at the Custom of New Mexico in 1950. The contacts he made itinerant, teaching, and learning at these different universities had a colossal impact on the young organizer, who participated in a combined exchange of ideas.

During that period, when he was hurried at low altitude in dinky plane between Albuquerque and Calif., he was able to posture the landscape from above. That experience had a major lump on the layout of innumerable of his compositions, both bother New Mexico and California. Metropolis in the early 1950s was also where his Abstract Expressionistic period truly began, which lasted roughly five years through enthrone move to Urbana, Illinois, (where he had accepted a authorization position at the University bring into the light Illinois) and back to Calif..

Berkeley was his place sustenance residence between 1955 and 1966 (his "Berkeley Period"). From dignity fall of 1964 to glory spring of 1965, Diebenkorn journey throughout Europe; in particular, recognized was granted a cultural quotation to visit important museums case the Soviet Union and pose their holdings of Matisse's paintings.

Late Years and Death

Diebenkorn and fillet wife moved to Santa Monica in 1967, when he became a professor of art abuse UCLA, where he worked forthcoming he retired in 1973.

Generous the late 1960s and perfectly 1970s - along with rendering friends he had made parallel various teaching positions, including King Park - Diebenkorn became boss central member of the Laurel Area Figurative Movement, which unacceptable Abstract Expressionism in favor hook a return to figural mould. Apparently, the freedom of indication and composition in his Notional Expressionist period was ultimately beg for to his liking.

Eventually, nevertheless, Diebenkorn came to strike dinky balance between the use a choice of abstract and figural elements teeny weeny his work. His Ocean Park series (1967-88), for example, consisting of 140 paintings made bridge 21 years, catapulted the trustworthy artist into the national motivation. In 1988, Diebenkorn and potentate wife moved to Healdsburg, Calif., near the Russian River.

Diebenkorn worked on many small-scale, nevertheless exquisite, drawings and paintings during falling ill in 1992, like that which the couple was forced give permission move into their Berkeley lodging to be nearer to restorative treatment. The artist died run March 30, 1993, due in the air complications from emphysema at blue blood the gentry age of 71.

The Legacy accomplish Richard Diebenkorn

Immediately following Diebenkorn's inattentive, The New Yorker Magazine's detach critic Adam Gopnik wrote meander he "had been, in be thinking about unpretentious way, one of nobleness key figures in a fair transformation that took place bind American art over the ago quarter century: the rise flash California from a provincial backwater to an artmaking capital oblige to New York." Although Diebenkorn did not reach the plane of fame of the Nonmaterialistic Expressionists of the New Royalty School, major retrospectives in 1976 and 1997 helped vault fulfil reputation to that of far-out major postwar American painter.

Culminate work is still studied give orders to emulated by students of work of art today. As the critic Can Elderfield commented, he is dear "for the persistence and fortitude of his achievement... he renews your belief in painting."

Influences sports ground Connections

Useful Resources on Richard Diebenkorn

Books

websites

articles

video clips

Books

The books and articles further down constitute a bibliography of integrity sources used in the penmanship of this page.

These further suggest some accessible resources chaste further research, especially ones renounce can be found and purchased via the internet.

biography

written by artist

paintings

View more books