Richard Diebenkorn: Ocean Park Paintings

 

A hallmark of the Ocean Park paintings is that each one creates its own, self-contained chromatic universe. The Ocean Park series represents some of the most significant accomplishments of Diebenkorn’s career and are among the major contributions of the recent past to contemporary American painting.

Among the works featured in the exhibition include 9 paintings and 8 works on paper, painted between 1968 and 1985. Diebenkorn began his prized Ocean Park series at the end of 1967 and continued to develop it throughout the rest of his career. For three years, he painted exclusively on canvas, while the Ocean Park works on paper followed in 1970.

In 1997, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a highly acclaimed Diebenkorn retrospective, the most comprehensive survey of his work, which then traveled to the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Museum of Art among others. In 1976, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY organized the first full-scale retrospective on Diebenkorn’s work, which was also presented at the Corcoran Gallery of American Art, Washington, DC, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.