Richard Diebenkorn Exhibitions
Master's Degree Exhibition
- Fine Arts Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 29 April 1951 - 5 May 1951
Diebenkorn's master's degree thesis exhibition presented twenty-two works by the young artist. Four paintings from 1951 were destroyed.
“29 APRIL – 5 MAY: His master’s degree exhibition hangs in the Fine Arts Gallery at UNM. Corbett and Spohn help Diebenkorn install the show. The paintings reveal the intense growth the artist has experienced since leaving CSFA. The larger canvases, with their spiderlike lines, calligraphic forms, cut- out shapes, and broad areas of brushed color, depart from the stricter formal works and the use of outline.
An article in the Albuquerque Journal quotes the artist as saying, '[My] primary concern in painting is space, which to me is the most characteristic thing about New Mexico.' The large, blank areas in his paintings 'reveal that openness of the desert, the vastness of the sky.'
Don Peterson writes on the exhibition for the student-run newspaper the Daily Lobo,
'This reviewer . . . did not like the work. To him, the form used is new, strange, weird, and meaningless. . . . While the reviewer was looking at the exhibit, a few art students, and an instructor, descended upon him. Their opinions are worth noting: To them, the works are “amazingly convincing,” “a completeness in each one,” and “a new art form, a new means of expression, a new way of looking and feeling about life.'"
—Chronology from Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1 (Yale University Press, 2016)
"He says his 'paintings are a process rather than a flat statement from the beginning.' They 'suggest...expansion and relationships.'" —Albuquerque Journal (May 2, 1951)
“29 APRIL – 5 MAY: His master’s degree exhibition hangs in the Fine Arts Gallery at UNM. Corbett and Spohn help Diebenkorn install the show. The paintings reveal the intense growth the artist has experienced since leaving CSFA. The larger canvases, with their spiderlike lines, calligraphic forms, cut- out shapes, and broad areas of brushed color, depart from the stricter formal works and the use of outline.
An article in the Albuquerque Journal quotes the artist as saying, '[My] primary concern in painting is space, which to me is the most characteristic thing about New Mexico.' The large, blank areas in his paintings 'reveal that openness of the desert, the vastness of the sky.'
Don Peterson writes on the exhibition for the student-run newspaper the Daily Lobo,
'This reviewer . . . did not like the work. To him, the form used is new, strange, weird, and meaningless. . . . While the reviewer was looking at the exhibit, a few art students, and an instructor, descended upon him. Their opinions are worth noting: To them, the works are “amazingly convincing,” “a completeness in each one,” and “a new art form, a new means of expression, a new way of looking and feeling about life.'"
—Chronology from Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1 (Yale University Press, 2016)
"He says his 'paintings are a process rather than a flat statement from the beginning.' They 'suggest...expansion and relationships.'" —Albuquerque Journal (May 2, 1951)