Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn, who died in 1993, is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century. The luminous abstractions of his later career and the innovative figurative works of his middle years firmly established him as a master in the high tradition of modernism. This revised and expanded edition of the first comprehensive monograph on the artist presents a rich selection of the artist's oeuvre. Until the mid-1950s, he painted in the abstract expressionist tradition (synthesizing, as he has since, such disparate influences as de Kooning, Gorky, Hopper, and Cezanne) before turning (unfashionably) to figurative painting along with artists David Park and Elmer Bischoff. He then embarked on the series of large abstract paintings for which he is best known--each titled "Ocean Park" after the beachside community where he worked. Reminiscent of Matisse in color and Mondrian in geometry, these are some of the most remarkable accomplishments of twentieth-century art. The updated section of this edition follows Diebenkorn's career from the mid-1980s until his death, focusing particularly on his adventurous late works on paper. In each "phase" of his career, Diebenkorn explored the intricate interplay between formal rigor and luminous, sensual color with the same masterful hand. Along with several hundred reproductions of the artist's work, critic Gerald Nordland provides a thoughtful and informative study of Diebenkorn's life and career, an updated, comprehensive exhibition history, and a selected bibliography.