Untitled [seated female nude leaning forward and down] [recto] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn’s charcoal drawing captures a seated female nude leaning forward. You can see him thinking through the figure, the marks shifting, searching for the right contour to capture the weight and form of her body. I've spent a lot of time drawing from life, and I know how difficult it is to get the proportions just right, the way a body occupies space. Diebenkorn is really working through something here. You can see it in the repetition of lines, the way he re-draws the arm, the shoulder, the curve of the back. The heavy shading gives a sense of volume to the figure, while the starkness of the charcoal creates a rawness, an immediacy. I think of Matisse, how he used line to define form. Diebenkorn is part of that conversation, pushing it further, into a kind of raw, gestural expressionism. It shows how artists build upon each other’s work, borrowing, innovating, and carrying the dialogue forward.