Gagosian has announced its representation of the estate of Richard Diebenkorn, best known for bringing a West Coast perspective to Abstract Expressionism in post-war America. The gallery’s partnership with the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation will begin with a career-spanning exhibition opening on November 8th at its 980 Madison Avenue location in New York. This is the same venue as Diebenkorn’s final solo exhibition in 1992, just months before his death the following year.
“We got to know each other in California, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit his studio a handful of times,” Larry Gagosian said in a statement. “It’s a great honor for me and the gallery to carry his legacy forward.”
The forthcoming exhibition, curated by British curator Jasper Sharp in collaboration with the Diebenkorn Foundation, will include paintings and works on paper covering six decades of the artist’s output. The presentation emphasizes the fluidity of Diebenkorn’s career, from early figurative scenes and Abstract Expressionist canvases to the luminous geometries of the “Ocean Park” series (1967–88).
Some other highlights will include a 1943 watercolor influenced by Edward Hopper and Paul Cézanne, a rarely seen large-scale 1960 painting of nudes, and works from the artist’s late years.
Born in Portland in 1922, Diebenkorn moved to San Francisco with his family when he was just two years old. He attended Stanford University. However, his studies were interrupted by World War II, during which time he served in the U.S. Marines from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), where he honed his Abstract Expressionist aesthetic.
Diebenkorn presented his first solo exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in 1948, before pursuing a master’s in fine arts at the University of New Mexico. When he returned to California in 1953, he started his famous “Berkeley” paintings (1953–56), noteworthy for their complex use of color and energetic composition. Over the next few decades, his work was deeply shaped by the West Coast, most notably in the “Ocean Park” series—approximately 135 abstract paintings begun in 1967 and named after the Santa Monica neighborhood where he maintained his studio.
Major institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art, have staged solo shows for Diebenkorn. He is featured in prestigious collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, among others.
“There are incredible refrains that occur across Diebenkorn’s oeuvre,” Sharp said in a statement. “Developing this exhibition revealed both his extraordinary facility and the sometimes surprising parallels across decades of both abstract and representational work. He was an artist who engaged deeply in sustained conversations with both his predecessors and contemporaries while charting his own individualistic path, making him highly relevant to the present moment.”
