Untitled [standing nude with her left foot on a chair seat] 1955 - 1967

This drawing of a standing nude with her left foot on a chair seat was made by Richard Diebenkorn using ink and graphite on paper. I wonder what it might have been like to be Diebenkorn, looking intently at the figure, deciding which lines to emphasize. I’m drawn to the confident strokes of ink that define the figure's form, countered by those delicate blue lines sketching in the background. It’s like he was thinking out loud with the graphite, deciding what to keep and what to let fade away. There’s this real push-and-pull between what’s solid and what’s just suggested, a dance between presence and absence that feels so alive. You can see echoes of Matisse and the Bay Area figurative movement but in the end it's so Diebenkorn, isn't it? That ability to make something so uniquely his. He shows us how artists are always building on what came before, remixing and reimagining, in this ongoing conversation across time.