Untitled [standing female nude with right hand raised to head] 1955 - 1967

This is an untitled drawing of a standing nude made with graphite on paper by Richard Diebenkorn. The marks are scrubby, with a lot of back-and-forth. It’s all about the process of finding the figure through a kind of searching, almost like feeling around in the dark. I love how Diebenkorn uses the graphite to create different textures. Look at the torso, where the lines are dense and layered, creating a sense of volume and weight. Then notice how the lines get thinner and more sparse towards the legs, suggesting a lighter, more ephemeral quality. The right hand raised to the head feels particularly poignant, a gesture of contemplation or maybe even despair. The way Diebenkorn renders it, with those quick, nervous strokes, really captures the feeling of a fleeting moment. For me, this drawing feels like a conversation between Diebenkorn and artists like Matisse, who also explored the nude figure with such sensitivity and grace. It’s a reminder that art is always an ongoing dialogue, a way of seeing and responding to the world around us.