Richard Diebenkorn Exhibitions
Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Works on Paper 1946-1952
- Van Doren Waxter, New York, 19 March 2020 - 26 June 2020
In March 2020, Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Works on Paper 1946–1952 and RRichard Diebenkorn: Special Presentation | Wartime Works 1943–1945 were scheduled to open at Van Doren Waxter in New York. Due to COVID-19 and shelter-in-place orders, the gallery became one of the first to announce online viewing of the exhibitions, making the catalogue with its new, scholarly essay by Scott A. Shields, installation and artwork images, and the press release all available for free on vandorenwaxter.com. The public did not have the opportunity to view the exhibition in person, which quietly filled the piano nobile of the gallery's historic townhouse in New York.
The exhibition presented rarely seen early paintings and drawings made by the distinguished American painter, draftsman, and printmaker Richard Diebenkorn.
"Late in life, Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), contemplating his career, remarked, 'I think what one is about now has intimately to do with what one did yesterday, ten years ago, thirty years ago. Just as you can continue that progression, what somebody else did, forty years earlier, a hundred years earlier, I think that's what one as an artist probably is.' Focusing on the paintings and drawings that precede his shift to figuration in 1955, this essay takes Diebenkorn at his word: that understanding his overall production depends on a broader knowledge of his early work. His representational pieces and early abstractions set the stage for what would follow, as did his nonobjective, Abstract Expressionist paintings. Collectively, these drawings and paintings reveal the forces that shaped Diebenkorn as a young artist: the California landscape; his service in the US Marines; and his teachers, the reviews he read, and the work of other artists he admired (both those he knew personally and those he did not)." —Essay "Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942–1955" by Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., in the exhibition catalogue
The exhibition presented rarely seen early paintings and drawings made by the distinguished American painter, draftsman, and printmaker Richard Diebenkorn.
"Late in life, Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), contemplating his career, remarked, 'I think what one is about now has intimately to do with what one did yesterday, ten years ago, thirty years ago. Just as you can continue that progression, what somebody else did, forty years earlier, a hundred years earlier, I think that's what one as an artist probably is.' Focusing on the paintings and drawings that precede his shift to figuration in 1955, this essay takes Diebenkorn at his word: that understanding his overall production depends on a broader knowledge of his early work. His representational pieces and early abstractions set the stage for what would follow, as did his nonobjective, Abstract Expressionist paintings. Collectively, these drawings and paintings reveal the forces that shaped Diebenkorn as a young artist: the California landscape; his service in the US Marines; and his teachers, the reviews he read, and the work of other artists he admired (both those he knew personally and those he did not)." —Essay "Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942–1955" by Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., in the exhibition catalogue