Untitled [seated female nude leaning into a chair] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this ink wash drawing of a seated female nude leaning into a chair. Isn’t it interesting to see the figure emerge from the paper with such sparse marks? I can imagine Diebenkorn in the studio, urgently trying to capture the pose, almost as if it were about to disappear. With each brushstroke, he seems to be searching for the right balance between representation and abstraction, between the specific and the universal. I really love the confident fluidity of the ink, which pools and bleeds into the paper. See how the single, almost unbroken line that defines the back and shoulders gives the figure a sense of weight and presence? It is a bit like Matisse but more somber. The way the ink spreads out feels really intimate, like he’s sharing a secret with us about how to see. It's almost as if he's inviting us to complete the picture ourselves. Like all artists, Diebenkorn was in conversation with the artists before him and his contemporaries, adding his own voice to the ongoing dialogue of art.