Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942–1955

Featuring approximately 100 paintings and drawings from the collection of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation—most of which have never before been publicly exhibited—this exhibition is the first to focus solely on the work the acclaimed painter made prior to his switch to figuration. 

Beginnings examines Diebenkorn’s stylistic and technical origins in oil, watercolor, gouache, ink, crayon, and collage, tracing the Portland-born artist’s evolution from representational landscape, to semiabstract and Surrealist-inspired work, to his mature Abstract Expressionist paintings in California from the Sausalito, Albuquerque, Urbana, and early Berkeley years.

A landmark contribution to the study and understanding of Diebenkorn’s work, Beginnings and its companion catalogue reveal the forces that shaped the young artist, including works that range from World War II drawings and watercolors of soldiers and military bases, to abstractions that unite the forms of Surrealism and the fractured planes of Cubism, to gestural works on paper. The exhibition concludes with one of the artist’s first mature figurative paintings, his 1954 Untitled (Horse and Rider), laying the foundation for the representational drawings and paintings starting in the mid-1950s for which Diebenkorn earned wide renown.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

IMAGE 1:  Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled (Horse and Rider), 1954. Oil on canvas, 21 x 24 in. (53.3 x 61 cm). © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

IMAGE 2:  Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, c. 1946, Cut-and-pasted and torn-and-pasted paper, gouache, ink, and crayon on paper, Collection of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.

Whether you go or not, the exhibition catalog, Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942-1955, focuses on Diebenkorn's evolution to maturity. It features nearly two hundred paintings and drawings, early pieces that evolved rapidly from representational landscape scenes and portraits of military colleagues, to semiabstract and Surrealist-inspired depictions of topography and the human form, to the artist's mature Abstract Expressionist paintings. Many of these pieces will be unfamiliar to the public, yet they offer a fuller picture of Diebenkorn's precocious achievements and set the stage for what was yet to come. Also photographs, with a foreword, chronology, bibliography, and index.

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