Richard Diebenkorn

M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York
Steven and Diane Jacobson, New York

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection, The Drawings of Richard Diebenkorn, November 1988 - December 1989, cat. no. 192, illustrated in color
New York, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Master Drawings of the Twentieth Century, May - June 1998, cat. no. 25, pp. 60-61, illustrated in color

John Elderfield, The Drawings of Richard Diebenkorn, Houston, 1988, p. 192, illustrated in color

Untitled (Ocean Park), 1987 is a hauntingly beautiful work on paper from the celebrated Ocean Park series by Richard Diebenkorn, one of the West Coast’s most prolific artists.  Diebenkorn created his works on paper as complete works independent from his larger paintings and they are wonderfully successful in their exploration between space, color and depth.   Layer upon layer, these drawings are created over an extended period of time, cumulatively built up of lines and shapes, scrubbed off, overpainted and lusciously layered.  Beginning from an ambiguous point, with no center to speak of, the viewer recognizes this by seeing that no line quite makes it completely across the sheet.  Blocks of pastel colors and varying sized shapes blend easily with harsh geometric lines in a hazy and atmospheric background.  Richard Newlin notes that “Thematically, the drawings set out to equate purely internal relationships of lines, shapes and colors, arranged and rearranged until they achieve a “rightness” for the artist that is both intuitive and calculated” (Richard Newlin, ed., Richard Diebenkorn Works on Paper, Houston, 1987, p. 10).  Untitled (Ocean Park), 1987, is simultaneously flat yet receding.  This spatial ambiguity paired with the luscious surface of layered color makes this one of Diebenkorn’s most beautiful works on paper.