Untitled [seated female nude with head bowed] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing of a seated female nude, head bowed, sometime during his career, using graphite on paper. It’s all lines here, like a wire sculpture, delicate yet strong. You can almost feel the weight of the model’s pose, the way her body sinks into itself. Diebenkorn captures a moment of vulnerability, maybe even exhaustion, but there’s also an underlying sense of dignity. His lines are confident, searching, as if he’s mapping out the emotional landscape of the scene as much as the physical form. I imagine him circling the figure, trying to capture a likeness, losing the likeness, finding it again. It reminds me a bit of de Kooning's drawings, that same restless energy and willingness to let the image fall apart and come back together. Like all great artists, they're in conversation with each other, pushing the boundaries of what a drawing, a painting, can be.