Untitled [woman reclining in a seat] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a reclining woman, probably in his studio, using graphite on paper. You can see the pentimenti, the ghost-like traces of erasures and corrections; the artist is working out the pose, adjusting the figure until he gets it just right. What was he thinking, I wonder? He was known for his abstract paintings, but was also deeply engaged with figuration. This drawing feels like he’s thinking through how to translate observation into abstraction and vice versa. The lines feel tentative and exploratory. There's a real vulnerability in the marks. You see this approach in other artists’ work too. Think of Matisse’s loose, searching lines or de Kooning’s expressive figures. Each artist builds on the last, developing a visual language to speak to the world. That is the process of art-making. Each mark embodies an artist’s attempt to see, understand, and connect.