Book Description
Collected here for the first time are rarely seen and largely unpublished figurative drawings and paintings on paper that represent a period of exploration and innovation for Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993). Perhaps the most renowned West Coast painter of the twentieth century, Diebenkorn alternated between the figurative and the abstract. These pieces, dating from roughly the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, not only display his facility with the human form but also how his famed Ocean Park paintings were influenced by these explorations. Published in conjunction with the John Berggruen Gallery, this revealing collection features 42 drawings, paintings, and gouaches. Beautifully reproduced on the page, Richard Diebenkorn: Figurative Works on Paper fills a key gap in the literature of this premier American artist.


About the Author
John McEnroe is a former tennis champion and current collector and dealer of fine art. He lives in New York City. Jane Livingston is an author and independent curator who authored the Whitney Museum catalog The Art of Richard Diebenkorn. Barnaby Conrad III is a painter and the author of ten books including Absinthe: History in a Bottle, published by Chronicle Books (0-8118-1650-8).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The work of Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) alternates between his two distinct and mutually masterful modes: the figurative and the abstract. Collected here for the first time are rarely seen and largely unpublished figurative drawings and paintings on paper which represent a period of exploration and innovation." "Dating from roughly the mid-nineteen fifties to the late sixties, these fully developed and important works do more than just illuminate Diebenkorn's mastery of the representational. Preceding, as they do, his famed Ocean Park era, they also highlight the influence of his figurative gifts on his wellknown abstract work." Published in conjunction with John Berggruen Gallery, who first mounted a major exhibition of these pieces, this revealing collection features forty-two drawings, paintings, and gouaches, accompanied by an introduction by John McEnroe and essays by Barnaby Conrad III and Jane Livingston. Beautifully reproduced on the page, Richard Diebenkorn: Figurative Works on Paper fills a key gap in the literature of this premier American artist.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This chapbook of uncollected figurative images by West Coast artist Richard Diebenkorn, known mostly for his abstractions, brings together a body of work that precedes his most famous Ocean Park paintings, and perhaps sheds some new light on them. In drawings, paintings and gouaches of nude and clothed women, the pictures range broadly in mood and execution: some of them are shadowy and brooding, others crudely, brightly patterned, still others reminiscent of youthful coffeehouse art. Throughout all, however, the images display confident brushwork and coloration, and a searching, complex relationship to their subjects. Numerous of them bear a freshness that would fit in the contemporary art world's most recent return to drawing. Although in some ways minor to Deibenkorn's oeuvre, even these smaller efforts have their gravity in the context of his imposing legacy. In the accompanying essays, Jane Livingston and Barnaby Conrad deliver solid art scholarship and personal recollection, respectively, while John McEnroe compares the artist's canvas to a tennis court ("His ability to move between serious exploration of abstraction and representational art reminds me of someone who began his career playing mainly from the baseline, later learned how to attack the net, and then settled back to using his ground strokes"). (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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