Timeline

Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943–1976 opens at the Albright­Knox Art Gallery and travels to Cincinnati Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery, the Whitney, LACMA, and the Oakland Museum.

Moves into new studio at 2448 Main Street in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Venice. Begins making Ocean Park–like compositions on the lids of vintage cigar boxes, known as the cigar box paintings, which he gives to friends and family.

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #98, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas, 1977 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

The artist at the Venice Biennale with Ocean Park #48 (1971) and Ocean Park #105 (1978), Venice, Italy, 1978 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

The artist in his Ocean Park studio with curator George Neubert, Santa Monica, Calif., 1977 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

The artist with artists Bob Graham and Ed Moses, Los Angeles, Calif., 1977 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

The artist’s Ocean Park studio, Santa Monica, Calif., 1977 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

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Decides to join the M. Knoedler and Co. gallery in New York. Becomes close friends with gallery director Lawrence Rubin and his wife, photographer Marina Schinz. He will have fourteen solo exhibitions with the gallery over the next sixteen years; Rubin and Knoedler will represent him until his death. Attends the opening of his first exhibition with the gallery in New York.

Travels to Bay Area to work on a series of etchings with Kathan Brown at her print shop, Crown Point Press, where he worked in the early 1960s. Will travel north almost every year until 1988 to work with Brown.

Selected as U.S. representative for the 38th Venice Biennale.

Becomes a member of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation grant selection board. He will travel to New York each year to meet with the committee until his resignation in 1983.

Travels from New York to Venezuela through the U.S. Embassy for the inauguration of a contemporary American art collection.

Family tours Mediterranean on a Stanford University trip, visiting Athens, Malta, Porto Empedocle in Sicily, Tunis, and Naples.

Begins Clubs and Spades series of works on paper.

Completes no paintings this year.

The artist’s Ocean Park studio, Santa Monica, Calif., 1981 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

The artist with friend and dealer Larry Rubin, Madrid, Spain, 1982 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

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Travels to New York for opening of the exhibition featuring the Clubs and Spades drawings at Knoedler, then on to Spain and Morocco with Larry Rubin and Marina Schinz.

Moves away from using club and spade motifs in works on paper, but continues to use these forms in printmaking.

Completes no paintings for a second successive year.

The artist in Japan with printmakers working with Crown Point Press, Kyoto, Japan, 1983 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

The artist in Japan with Phyllis, Bill and Shirley Brice, Tom Marioni, and Kathan Brown and Hidekatsu Takada of Crown Point Press, Japan, 1987 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

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Attends the opening for Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings from the Ocean Park Series at Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California. Richard Diebenkorn: Works on Paper, 1970–1983 at John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco. Curator George Neubert organizes Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings, 1948–1983 as a part of the Resource/Response/Reservoir exhibition program at SFMOMA.

Makes first of two trips to Kyoto, Japan, as a part of Crown Point Press program to bring artists to work with wood­block printmaker Tadashi Toda. Kathan Brown and her husband, artist Tom Marioni, and Crown Point printer Hidekatsu Takada are there throughout visit. Works on Ochre and Blue.

For the third successive year, completes no paintings.

Begins painting again, with Ocean Park #126 (CR no. 4580).

A new show of drawings opens at M. Knoedler and Co. in New York. The artist’s mother, Dorothy Diebenkorn, dies. Begins large series of lithographs at Gemini G.E.L.

The artist in his Ocean Park studio, Santa Monica, Calif., 1984. Photograph by Leo Holub © The Estate of Leo Holub

The artist in his Ocean Park studio, Santa Monica, Calif., 1984. Photograph by Leo Holub © The Estate of Leo Holub

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George Neubert organizes Richard Diebenkorn: An Intimate View, a show of Diebenkorn’s cigar box paintings, at Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska. The show travels to Brooklyn Museum later this year. Diebenkorns visit Prague to see their friend William Luers, now an ambassador, and his wife, Wendy.

Awarded a chair in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, into which he will be inducted on 21 May 1986. Richard Diebenkorn opens at M. Knoedler and Co. in New York.

Completes final Ocean Park painting.

Decides to leave Santa Monica; begins driving through California, Montana, and the Southwest, looking for a place to settle.

The Diebenkorns buy an 1897 Victorian across from a vineyard in Healdsburg, in the Alexander Valley in Northern California. Converts garage into a studio. Diebenkorn travels to Japan with Crown Point Press to work on a second edition of wood­block prints. Richard Diebenkorn opens at M. Knoedler and Co. in New York.