Untitled [woman in a striped shirt with cigarette] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a woman in a striped shirt with a cigarette, and well, it’s all about the line, isn’t it? The confident, searching line that feels both immediate and deeply considered. Look at how he captures the planes of her face, the way the lines build up around her eye, creating depth and shadow. There’s a real tension between representation and abstraction here. The lines almost feel like they are mapping the surface of her skin, but simultaneously, they are also just marks on the page, existing for their own sake. It’s like he is thinking through the act of drawing itself. Those stripes! They're not just stripes; they're a rhythm, a structure. It's like Diebenkorn is talking to Matisse, maybe even Picasso, about how to build form with simple, elegant gestures. It reminds us that art is a constant conversation, a back-and-forth between artists across time and space, always questioning, always exploring.