Untitled [seated figure] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled sketch of a seated figure sometime during his career with charcoal on paper. As a veteran of World War II, the social context in which Diebenkorn began his artistic practice was one of anxiety, of grappling with the traumas of war. He was associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement, a California-based group of artists who turned away from the dominance of abstract expressionism in order to re-engage with figuration. We might ask, why figuration? What does it mean to return to recognizable forms in the wake of world conflict? Diebenkorn would have been very familiar with art institutions. He taught at multiple universities including the California College of Arts and Crafts and the University of California, Los Angeles. We might wonder, how did his institutional affiliations shape his artistic practice? To understand an artwork like this, we can research the history of art education, of artists' associations, and of regional artistic movements. The meaning of art is always contingent on the conditions in which it is made.