Untitled 1975

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled work on paper in 1975. It’s a mass of intersecting geometric forms reminiscent of architectural plans or city grids, done in muted colors and tones. Diebenkorn was an American painter whose career traced a fascinating path through the dominant trends of postwar American art. He began as an abstract expressionist, then moved into a period of figurative painting, and finally returned to abstraction in his famous "Ocean Park" series. This work is an example of his later abstract style, which suggests an important moment in the history of American art when many artists turned away from the heroic individualism of abstract expressionism. Instead they embraced a cooler, more detached aesthetic, reflecting the changing social and political landscape of the 1970s. To understand Diebenkorn’s work more fully, we might consider his relationship to the Bay Area art scene in California, the influence of European modernism, and the cultural shifts taking place in America during the late 20th century.