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Upcoming! Diebenkorn on view in Los Angeles LEARN MORE News Announcements, interviews, articles, reviews, and videos MORE ABOUT THE FOUNDATION From the Basement The World by Air: The Making of…

Early Years

1922 22 April 1922: Richard Clifford Diebenkorn Jr. is born to Richard Clifford Diebenkorn Sr. and Dorothy née Stephens in Portland, Oregon.1 Diebenkorn Sr. is a career employee for the…

Student and Wartime

1940 Fall: Enrolls at Stanford University in Palo Alto. Does not challenge his parents’ wishes that he become a doctor or lawyer, but avoids declaring a major. Focuses on taking…

Sausalito, the CSFA, and Woodstock

1946 17 January–11 May: Enrolls at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco on the GI Bill. The school, managed by the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA),…

Albuquerque, Urbana, and New York

1950 Certain things were acceptable [at CSFA], certain things were out, and it was, like there was a way. You in some sense toed a line, and this bugged me…

Berkeley Abstraction

1953 Fall: The Diebenkorns move back to the Bay Area and settle in Berkeley; they choose the city for UC Berkeley, where Phyllis will begin her PhD program in psychology,…

Berkeley Figurative Years

1956 January: Critic Hubert Crehan, a former student of Clyfford Still at the CSFA, writes the article “Is There a California School?” for Art News, disavowing the existence of a…

Santa Monica and Ocean Park

1966 Fall: Daughter Gretchen marries Richard Grant, a fellow Stanford student, at the chapel at Stanford University. Moves with Phyllis in September to Santa Monica, where he begins teaching as…

Santa Monica and Ocean Park

1976 The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo approaches Diebenkorn in regard to a potential retrospective exhibition. Director Robert T. Buck Jr. and assistant curator Linda Cathcart work closely with Diebenkorn…

Healdsburg

1988 8 January: Attends memorial service for friend Carey Stanton, who died on 8 December 1987, held at La Capilla de la Santa Cruz del Rosario on Santa Cruz Island,…

The Artist

The Artist All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. —Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993) produced, over…

Dear Wayne: Happy 100th

By Daisy Murray Holman November 13, 2020 Wayne – I’m sure you have been asked where you’ve been keeping another brilliant talent. I’ve read two examples of it — the…

World War II Ephemera

Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant, interview by Katharine James April 1, 2020 Largely loaned from the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation’s holdings, Richard Diebenkorn: Special Presentation | Wartime Works 1943–1945 at Van Doren Waxter,…

Six on Sausalito

Six perspectives on artworks, people, places, and ideas that tell new stories about the Sausalito period and are preserved in the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation Archives, Colby College Special Collections &…

France, 1978

By Daisy Murray Holman February 3, 2020 Santa Monica, California 2.20.78 Dear Roselle, We’re rushing – so no time for amenities. Thought I should let you know that I don’t…

Studio notes by Richard 
Diebenkorn

By Katharine James December 19, 2019 Richard Diebenkorn was an introspective man who remained skeptical of his success as an artist throughout his life. Over the years he spent countless…

Meeting Santa Cruz Island

By Daisy Murray Holman December 19, 2019 Letter from Richard Diebenkorn to Phyllis Diebenkorn, 12 September 1958, Port Hueneme, Calif. © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation View in Collections Letter from Richard…

Richard Diebenkorn: From Russia with Love

First published by Verbatim, Brooklyn Rail (October 2016) March 27, 2019 In the fall of 1964 Richard and Phyllis Diebenkorn participated in a cultural tour of the USSR. In the…

Collections

Collections The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation presents an illustrated online catalogue of Diebenkorn’s artistic production and its archival holdings of the artist’s personal and professional materials, a digital initiative inviting public…

Paintings & Drawings

About Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné Edited by Jane Livingston and Andrea Liguori This four-volume catalogue raisonné is the definitive resource on Diebenkorn’s unique works, including his paintings, works on…

The Foundation

The Foundation Our mission is to expand knowledge and foster appreciation of Richard Diebenkorn’s art, and to illuminate crucial artistic developments of the 20th century. The Foundation increases public access…

Prints

About Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné of Prints Edited by Andrea Liguori This two-volume catalogue raisonné of Diebenkorn’s prints will be the first comprehensive examination of the artist’s printmaking output…

Biography

Biography Richard Clifford Diebenkorn Jr. was born in April 1922 in Portland, Oregon. When he was two years old his father, who was a hotel supply sales executive, relocated the…

Publications

Richard Diebenkorn: A Retrospective Sasha Nicholas With contributions by Tony Berlant, Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant, William Luers, Steven A. Nash, and Wayne Thiebaud. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2019 Rizzoli…

New Republic: The Rectangular Canvas is Dead

Richard Diebenkorn and the problems of modern painting September 7, 2013 By Jed Perl © Rose Mandel Archive You have probably never heard of the young painter Eleanor Ray, but…

ARTnews: He’s Entering the Canon

August 18, 2016 By M. H. Miller Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #54, 1972, oil and charcoal on canvas, 100 x 81 in. (254 x 205.7 cm) © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation…

Brooklyn Rail: From Russia With Love

October 4, 2016 Richard and Phyllis Diebenkorn at their Hillcrest Road home, c. 1964 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation Richard and Phyllis Diebenkorn sent these postcards to the artist’s mother in…

Esquire: A Good Reason to Visit Baltimore

October 26, 2016 By Alex Belth Richard Diebenkorn, Seated Figure with Hat, 1967, oil on canvas, 57 3/4 x 61 3/4 in. (146.7 x 156.8 cm), Collection of the National…

Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné debuts

November 30, 2016 Berkeley, CA and New York, NY Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant presents Colin B. Bailey, Director, Morgan Library & Museum with the Foundation’s last remaining bound version of Richard…

Art Newspaper: The changeable Californian

Richard Diebenkorn’s four-volume catalogue raisonné reveals his variable styles December 12, 2016 By Alexander Adams Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape #1, 1963, oil on canvas, 60 1/4 x 50 1/2 in. (153…

Artforum: Matisse/Diebenkorn

May 1, 2017 By Ara Osterweil Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #54, 1972, oil and charcoal on canvas, 100 x 81 in. (254 x 205.7 cm) © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation It…

IFAR Journal: My Father, Richard Diebenkorn

December 4, 2017 Excerpted and edited from an IFAR Evening talk by Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant IFAR Journal (International Foundation for Art Research), Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 Editor’s Note…

Richard Diebenkorn: A Retrospective

A comprehensive new monograph featuring a revelatory interview with artist Wayne Thiebaud August 15, 2019 Berkeley, CA Richard Diebenkorn: A Retrospective (Rizzoli New York, 2019) This September, Rizzoli New York…

New Criterion: The Critic’s Notebook

On Richard Diebenkorn, Mario Buatta, Giambattista Vico & more from the world of culture. January 14, 2020 By The Editors Richard Diebenkorn: A Retrospective (Rizzoli Books, New York, 2019) Richard…

Reveal News: Fancy galleries, fake art

Co-produced with PRX January 25, 2020 © Reveal News In the mid-’90s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style…

New Criterion: Pieces of Ocean Park

Tracing six of Diebenkorn’s works on paper to their origins in the south of France, 1978. February 3, 2020 By Amy Beth Wright Richard Diebenkorn’s temporary studio at the home…

Cantor Magazine: Richard Diebenkorn at Stanford

Experts share their perspectives on viewing the artist’s work at the Cantor and Anderson Collection March 30, 2020 Director Susan Dackerman and curatorial assistant Jessica Ventura review Richard Diebenkorn’s Window,…

Up Close: One Painting Tours With Artists

Anderson Collection at Stanford University April 23, 2020 Hosted by art historian and the associate director of ITALIC at Stanford, Kim Beil, the micro-video series focuses on a single object…

Lincoln Yamaguchi

By Daisy Murray Holman April 4, 2019 In 1955 Richard Diebenkorn was 33 years old and working out of a two-story brick building on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, California. The…

As Seen By: Leo Holub in the Studio

By Daisy Murray Holman August 25, 2021 Leo Holub first photographed Richard Diebenkorn in 1963 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At the time Diebenkorn was the university’s first…

Art Scoping, Episode 60: Sarah C. Bancroft

May 15, 2021 By Maxwell L. Anderson © 2021 Art Scoping Listen to podcast “A $7 Billion Philanthropic Force.” That’s an artnet headline describing artist-endowed foundations, and this episode sheds…