Richard Diebenkorn: Online Presentation | Wartime Works 1943 - 1945

Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Works on Paper 1946-1952 will be accompanied by a special presentation of the artist’s “wartime” work loaned by Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. These representational drawings, to be installed on the third floor of the gallery, were made during the artist’s military service from 1943 to 1945, a period when he produced sketches and watercolors of soldiers. “It was a happy yet terrifying time,” Shields writes, “as Diebenkorn knew he was to be sent behind enemy lines”—the artist was honorably discharged after the surrender of Japan. A moody 1945 work features its subject rendered in dense, rich ink atop a bright sheet; in another, a young Diebenkorn gazes downward in a graphite on paper (1943) self-portrait striking for its direct likeness and immediacy.

A loan exhibition from a Private Collection and The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.