Richard Diebenkorn

Neuhaus emigrated from Germany in 1904 and was a seminal figure in establishing the Bay Area as a center of art appreciation and education on the West Coast.

On the East Coast, when he transferred to the base in Quantico, Diebenkorn took advantage of his location to visit art museums in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and New York City.

This allowed him to study in person the paintings of modern masters such as Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.

Also at this time, he had his first exposure to the new New York–based artists who were beginning their abstract Surrealism-based paintings.

The work of Robert Motherwell, in particular, left an impression.

Diebenkorn began his own experiments in abstract painting.

Both Ryder and Erle Loran had studied art in Europe in the 1920s and brought their first-hand knowledge of European modernism to their teaching.

Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker.

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.

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.

While attending Stanford, Diebenkorn visited the home of Sarah Stein, the sister-in-law of Gertrude Stein, and first saw the works of European modernist masters Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse.

Also at Stanford, Diebenkorn met his fellow student and future wife, Phyllis Antoinette Gilman.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Diebenkorn lived and worked in various places: San Francisco and Sausalito (1946–47 and 1947–1950), Woodstock, New York (1947), Albuquerque, New Mexico (1950–1952), Urbana, Illinois (1952–53), and Berkeley, California (1953–1966).

He developed his own style of abstract expressionist painting.

After World War II, the art world's focus shifted from the School of Paris to the United States and, in particular, to the New York School.

They married in 1943 and went on to have two children together, a daughter, Gretchen (1945), and a son, Christopher (1947).

The beginning of the United States's involvement in World War II interrupted Deibenkorn's education at Stanford, and he was not able complete his degree at that time.

Diebenkorn entered the United States Marine Corps in 1943, where he served until 1945.

While enlisted, Diebenkorn continued to study art and expanded his knowledge of European modernism, first while enrolled briefly at the University of California, Berkeley, and later on the East Coast, while stationed at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia.

While enrolled at Berkeley he had three influential teachers: Worth Ryder, Erle Loran, and Eugene Neuhaus.

In 1945, Diebenkorn was scheduled to deploy to Japan; however, with the war's end in August 1945, he was discharged and returned to life in the Bay Area.

In 1946, Diebenkorn enrolled as a student in the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute), which was developing its own vigorous style of abstract expressionism.

He was influenced at first by Clyfford Still, who also taught at the CSFA from 1946 to 1950, Arshile Gorky, Hassel Smith, and Willem de Kooning.

Diebenkorn became a leading abstract expressionist on the West Coast.

In 1947, after ten months in Woodstock on an Alfred Bender travel grant, Diebenkorn returned to the CSFA, where he adopted abstract expressionism as his vehicle for self-expression.

He was offered a place on the CSFA faculty in 1947 and taught there until 1950.

His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

From 1950 to 1952, Diebenkorn was enrolled under the G.I. Bill in the University of New Mexico’s graduate fine arts department, where he continued to adapt his abstract expressionist style.

By the mid-1950s, Diebenkorn had become an important figurative painter, in a style that bridged Henri Matisse and abstract expressionism.

For the academic year 1952–53, Richard Diebenkorn took a faculty position at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where he taught painting and drawing.

In November and December 1952, he had his first solo exhibit at a commercial art gallery, the Paul Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles.

In September 1953, Diebenkorn moved to back to the San Francisco Bay Area from New York City, where he had spent the summer.

He took a position at California College of Arts and Crafts in 1955, teaching until 1958.

In the late 1960s he began his extensive series of geometric, lyrical abstract paintings.

Known as the Ocean Park paintings, these paintings were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim.

He established his home in Berkeley and lived there until 1966.

During the first few years of this period, Diebenkorn abandoned his strict adherence to abstract expressionism and began to work in a more representational style.