Untitled [standing female nude with right arm behind back] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a standing female nude, and the first thing I see is her right arm reaching behind her back in what seems like a relaxed but also guarded posture, created with spare lines on paper. I can almost feel the scratch of the pencil as it moves tentatively across the surface. I bet Diebenkorn was thinking about Matisse as he drew, or maybe even de Kooning, trying to capture the essence of the figure with a kind of restless energy. See how the head is just an open oval, as if the drawing is more about form and presence than likeness. The lines are searching, aren’t they? Like he’s mapping out the territory of the body, finding his way through the curves and angles. It’s like he’s inviting us to complete the picture, to fill in the blanks with our own imagination. This kind of artistic conversation across time is what keeps painting alive, always questioning, always evolving.