Structure and Imagery

From the Press Release: “I’d left all my influences in San Francisco.  I left my mentors.  I think I was saying to myself in Albuquerque that OK I’m going to damn well paint what I want I’m not going to do this qualifying of my intuitive responses….If grass green and sky blue and desert tan; if these associations come into the work that’s part of my experience.”   - Richard Diebenkorn, interview with Mark Lavatelli, Santa Monica, California, November 1978   Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present an exhibition of works on paper from 1949-1955 by Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993). Organized in cooperation with the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation,   Richard Diebenkorn: Early Color Abstractions 1949-1955  features thirty works exhibited for the first time.    Diebenkorn’s early works from the late 40s through the mid 50s are considered among the finest examples of postwar American abstraction. Illuminating Diebenkorn's formative perio...

"I can never accomplish what I want – only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand." "My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business." "I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue." "My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings." "If you get an image try to destroy it." "As a work progresses, its power to elicit and dictate response mounts. There seems to be an optimum moment when this power is at its greatest which just precedes the point where 'elicit' is no longer apt usage. 'Dictates' is the ...