Busacca Gallery

A rare original Ocean Park painting by artist Richard Diebenkorn is available for viewing. The work on paper, sign RD 77, is a mix of oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, gouache, and charcoal on paper, measuring 30 by 22 inches. This 1977 painting has the same wonderful brushstrokes and carries the same delicacy and nuances as its counterparts. It utilizes optical mixing of colors through layering and gouache techniques. This painting is part of Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series, which began in 1967 and continued until the artist's death in 1993. This original 1977 work on paper painting, has been authenticated and documented in the Richard Diebenkorn, Catalogue Raisonné. It is a must-see moment that offers a marvelous opportunity to observe the trajectory of Diebenkorn's compositional investigation and his encyclopedic skills as an artist. His work leads to different conclusions, epiphanies, and insights. Long before Gerhard Richter, Diebenkorn practiced a harmonious both/and paradigm between abstraction and interpretative realism. He proved that geometric compositional distillation and expressive mark-making were symbiotic. Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His later work (best known as the Ocean Park paintings) were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim. The Henri Matisse paintings French Window at Collioure, and View of Notre-Dame both from 1914 exerted tremendous influence on Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Parkpaintings. According to art historian Jane Livingston, Diebenkorn saw both Matisse paintings in an exhibition in Los Angeles in 1966 and they had an enormous impact on him and his work. Livingston says about the January 1966 Matisse exhibition that Diebenkorn saw in Los Angeles: It is difficult not to ascribe enormous weight to this experience for the direction his work took from that time on. Two pictures he saw there reverberate in almost every Ocean Park canvas. View of Notre Dame and French Window at Collioure, both painted in 1914, were on view for the first time in the US.

Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was an American artist best known for his abstract and figurative paintings. He was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in San Francisco. He studied at Stanford University and the University of New Mexico before serving in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. After the war, Diebenkorn returned to school and earned his MFA from the University of New Mexico. He then moved to the Bay Area and became associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement, a group of artists who rejected the dominant abstract expressionism of the time and instead focused on figurative and representational art. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Diebenkorn began to experiment with abstraction, creating large, colorful canvases that were influenced by the landscape of the California coast. These works, which he called his "Ocean Park" series, are characterized by their geometric shapes and bold use of color. In the 1970s, Diebenkorn returned to figurative painting, creating a series of works that featured interiors and still lifes. He continued to explore both abstraction and figuration throughout his career, and his work is characterized by a strong sense of composition, color, and light. Diebenkorn's work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He is considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Diebenkorn

Richard Clifford Diebenkorn Jr. was born on April 22, 1922 in Portland, Oregon. His family moved to San Francisco, California, when he was two years old. From the age of four or five he was continually drawing.[2] In 1940, Diebenkorn entered Stanford University, where he met his first two artistic mentors, professor and muralist Victor Arnautoff, who guided Diebenkorn in classical formal discipline with oil paint; and Daniel Mendelowitz, with whom he shared a passion for the work of Edward Hopper. Hopper's influence can be seen in Diebenkorn's representational work of this time.