Untitled [seated female nude with crossed legs] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this ink drawing on paper of a seated female nude. It’s all about the gesture, isn't it? Look at the way he’s used the brush, the ink bleeding ever so slightly into the paper. It's like a dance, a quick, confident swirl of dark lines that create a figure and a chair out of almost nothing. The ink varies, thick and pooling in some areas, especially around the shoulders, then thinning out to these delicate strokes that define the legs and the chair’s form. There’s a vulnerability in the sparseness, in the way he leaves the face blank, a kind of openness that invites us to project our own feelings onto the figure. Notice how the lines aren’t perfect, how they wobble and sometimes break. Diebenkorn was always searching, and this drawing feels like a moment in that search, a fleeting thought captured with beautiful simplicity. I think of Matisse’s line drawings, the same kind of economy and grace. It is never really finished, it’s just resting somewhere, for a while.