Richard Diebenkorn Correspondence
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Correspondence from Richard Diebenkorn to Phyllis Diebenkorn
Date:
7 September 1945 Medium:
Ink on paper
Current owner:
Richard Diebenkorn Foundation Archives
Credit Line:
© Richard Diebenkorn Foundation RD number:
RDFA.264 Description
Correspondence from Richard Diebenkorn to Phyllis Diebenkorn while the artist was serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, 7 September1945
Transcription:
September 7th [1945]
Darling –
Yesterday I didn't write you a letter because I went on liberty and I had a full exhausting time and when I returned at ten I couldn't keep my eyes open. So I am writing you this morning and I will write you again tonight after today's things have happened.
I spent most of the day in the art academy library with an artist I met from the fourth division. He is from Greece (1930) and is a pretty good painter from what I could tell from small kodachrome negatives of his pictures. He has some difficulty with English but has studied art for years and has some good things to say. He likes my paintings and says by the time I am 30 I will having nothing to worry about. He has a face just like the woman who played "Pilar" in F.W.J.B.J. who is incidentally Greek too. But he is short and slight.
I found a book compiled by Venturi that contained a small black and white reproduction of everything Cézanne ever painted to the copies he did at the Louvre as a student. I had no idea he was so prolific. There are about 1500 including watercolors and a few drawings. I found all of Picasso there except for his very recent period. In some of the watercolors cubism is carred as far as Braque and Picasso carried it. The people in the blue and rose periods are from Cézanne. But I also looked at two or three books on Picasso and I am no less impressed with him. Theodore Hios studied some books on Botticelli. I should have mentioned that a great many of his relatives were executed by the Germans. For one German soldier killed 20 or 30 doctors, lawyers or artists were executed.
Later we met Shank and went up to the university where we listened to music. On the weight of Sullivan and my pleas Shank is giving Beethoven another chance. His record collection was loaned to him and it contains "Grosse Fuge" which is the original concluding movement to the B flat major quartet and two quartets opuses (opi?) 127 + 135. I am not completely familiar with the quartets but they are rapidly growing on me and The Great Fugue I do know and it is indescribablly magnificient. An orchestra plays it and I want to hear it played — as it was written — by a quartet. (This pen is going to collapse any day now. The point looks like I've used it to play "mumbly pig" with.)
I have to go to the Navy Yard now so I'll stop.
I love you Darling very very much and I have my fingers crossed.
I love Grett too. Witz
Transcription:
September 7th [1945]
Darling –
Yesterday I didn't write you a letter because I went on liberty and I had a full exhausting time and when I returned at ten I couldn't keep my eyes open. So I am writing you this morning and I will write you again tonight after today's things have happened.
I spent most of the day in the art academy library with an artist I met from the fourth division. He is from Greece (1930) and is a pretty good painter from what I could tell from small kodachrome negatives of his pictures. He has some difficulty with English but has studied art for years and has some good things to say. He likes my paintings and says by the time I am 30 I will having nothing to worry about. He has a face just like the woman who played "Pilar" in F.W.J.B.J. who is incidentally Greek too. But he is short and slight.
I found a book compiled by Venturi that contained a small black and white reproduction of everything Cézanne ever painted to the copies he did at the Louvre as a student. I had no idea he was so prolific. There are about 1500 including watercolors and a few drawings. I found all of Picasso there except for his very recent period. In some of the watercolors cubism is carred as far as Braque and Picasso carried it. The people in the blue and rose periods are from Cézanne. But I also looked at two or three books on Picasso and I am no less impressed with him. Theodore Hios studied some books on Botticelli. I should have mentioned that a great many of his relatives were executed by the Germans. For one German soldier killed 20 or 30 doctors, lawyers or artists were executed.
Later we met Shank and went up to the university where we listened to music. On the weight of Sullivan and my pleas Shank is giving Beethoven another chance. His record collection was loaned to him and it contains "Grosse Fuge" which is the original concluding movement to the B flat major quartet and two quartets opuses (opi?) 127 + 135. I am not completely familiar with the quartets but they are rapidly growing on me and The Great Fugue I do know and it is indescribablly magnificient. An orchestra plays it and I want to hear it played — as it was written — by a quartet. (This pen is going to collapse any day now. The point looks like I've used it to play "mumbly pig" with.)
I have to go to the Navy Yard now so I'll stop.
I love you Darling very very much and I have my fingers crossed.
I love Grett too. Witz