Untitled [seated nude with her hands clasped in her lap] 1955 - 1967

Editor: This is Richard Diebenkorn’s “Untitled [seated nude with her hands clasped in her lap],” created sometime between 1955 and 1967 using pencil on paper. It’s incredibly minimal, almost ghostly. What strikes you most about it? Curator: Oh, the beauty in those deliberate lines! It feels like more than a study. There's a quiet strength to the sitter, wouldn’t you agree? Notice how the artist eschews the face. He offers us form, weight, but resists easy answers to her gaze, her emotions, even her identity. Does that make the figure more universal, more immediate to your own experience? Editor: I see what you mean about the lack of a face adding to its universality. The hands clasped in the lap feel very central to that reading as well. Curator: Absolutely. Those hands – slightly awkward, maybe, but so very human. They suggest introspection, vulnerability… perhaps a quiet defiance. It reminds me a little of early Matisse drawings – that same exploration of line to define not just shape, but feeling. What I find intriguing is the interplay between those bold, almost architectural lines and the gentler curves of the figure. Don’t you think? Editor: Yeah, there's definitely a balance, or maybe even a tension, between the geometric shapes and the softness of the body. Thanks, I would never have thought to make a comparison to architecture otherwise. Curator: It's about finding echoes, you know? Art is just a long conversation through time, artists answering each other, posing new questions with every line, every stroke. You get the impression of process here – an idea coming to life right before our very eyes. Isn't that thrilling?