Untitled [seated female nude dipping her head] 1955 - 1967

This is a brush and ink drawing of a seated nude made by Richard Diebenkorn. What strikes me is the speed and confidence of his brushstrokes, they have a real urgency. You can almost feel him wrestling with the image, trying to capture the essence of the figure in as few lines as possible. The ink is applied in varying thicknesses, from delicate washes to bold, graphic lines, creating a sense of depth and volume. Look at the way he uses the negative space to define the contours of the body, it's so economical, so direct. The strokes around the shoulders, for example, are so dark you can almost feel the weight of that posture. It’s all about the process, the act of seeing and responding, of translating the three-dimensional world onto a flat surface with just ink and paper. Diebenkorn often returned to the figure throughout his career, but he was equally drawn to abstraction, like you see in the work of de Kooning. Ultimately, for both artists, it was about finding a balance between representation and pure form, embracing the freedom of ambiguity and open-ended interpretation.