Richard Diebenkorn Berkeley Years in Palm Springs

My friend Penny and I roamed through the Richard Deibenkorn exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum on Tuesday.  We connected to the audio tour via cell phones and enjoyed the colors and creations of the artist during while he lived in Berkeley, CA from 1953 to 1966.  This Abstract Expressionist painter turned to painting figures and landscapes during this period...often in combination with his abstract architectural paintings.  Some Abstractionists were outraged...others admired his combination of painting styles.  Certainly his figures of people, still lifes and landscapes we very "impressionistic."  He was highly influenced by Matisse...a post impressionist painter.  In fact in one of the paintings, he duplicated a detailed wallpaper pattern that Matisse painted.

Diebenkorn was born in 1922 in Portland, Oregon and moved with his family to San Francisco when he was 2.  He entered Stanford University in 1940.  He lived around the country including New York where he developed his style of abstract expressionist painting.  He served in the Marines during WWII and used the G.I. Bill to earn his MFA at the University of New Mexico.

In his early Berkeley years he carried over the color palate of New Mexico soil and scenes.  Later he added brighter primary colors in his paintings influenced by the Berkeley and San Francisco architecture and landscape.  

In 1967, he moved to Santa Monica in the Ocean Park neighborhood where he dropped his painting of figures and created abstract paintings influence by the light, color, and landscape of the Southern California beach life near the studio of his friend Sam Francis, also an abstract expressionist painter.  He was also a professor at UCLA.  In 1985, he moved to a house on the Russian River in Sonoma County North of San Francisco to get away from the busy and noisy city. He died in 1993 from complications from emphysema.

Below are pictures of a few of the over 100 paintings and drawings on display in Palm Springs:

Richard Diebenkorn 1956

Figure on a Porch 1959

Seawall 1957

Untitled 1955