Ocean Park No. 22 (Primary Title)
Richard Diebenkorn, American, 1922 - 1993 (Artist)
“Temperamentally, I have always been a landscape painter.” -Richard Diebenkorn
Shortly after moving to southern California in 1966, Diebenkorn abandoned representation for abstraction, focusing on the monumental, sequentially numbered Ocean Park series. Titled after the seaside Santa Monica neighborhood where Diebenkorn lived and worked, these paintings embody his response to his new environment. Their gentle luminosity and geometric structure evoke that locale’s coastal light. Ocean Park No. 22 takes notice of Minimalism by emphasizing simplified colors and basic structures, but it also looks to the work of earlier 20th-century artists, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.
Made in America, Virginia Beach Arts Center, Virginia Beach, VA, April 5 – June 11, 1989
Contemporary Art from the Virginia Museum, Muscarelle Museum, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, September 30 – November 15, 1987
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