理查·迪本康

A gift from the artist to the present owner

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. This work is attached verso to the backing board in several places. There are artist's pinholes in all four corners and all four edges are deckled. Close inspection reveals a small spot of paper skinning in the top left quadrant, as visible in the catalogue illustration. Further inspection reveals a speck of media accretion towards the centre of the top left quadrant. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

An intimately scaled work on paper by Richard Diebenkorn, the present piece was executed in 1976, during the height of the artist’s acclaimed Ocean Park series. Possessing the same geometric division of the picture plane and the same luminous manipulation of colour as these momentous paintings – many of which populate the most esteemed museum collections across the globe – this work extols the mastery over colour and light that represents the signature core of Diebenkorn’s oeuvre. Given to the present owner as a gift by the artist, this rare work on paper has remained in the same collection for almost forty years.

Diebenkorn inaugurated the Ocean Park series in 1966, the very same year he moved to the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica, California, an area that takes its name from a local amusement park. The lilting effects of sunlight and ocean air as well as the open expanses of beach contrasting sharply with the geometries of nearby streets and buildings are ethereally evoked in these eponymous paintings with infinite variety. With a surface divided both vertically and horizontally, with quadrilateral cross sections encasing diaphanous layers of pigment, the present work possesses these same airy abstract sensibility. Akin to the methodology of the counterpart works on canvas, planes and facets of colour have been laid thinly and delicately, one on top of the other, while coloured lines of paint have evidently been drawn and redrawn, nearly covered and then retraced. Washes of pinks, peaches, lavenders and yellows are embraced by bolder stripes of blue, red, green and yellow, banding and marking off geometric fields. In the works on paper as in the monumental paintings Diebenkorn took pains to show his process. As Jane Livingstone describes, “One of the most important hallmarks of the Ocean Park paintings, evident from the very beginning, is that each one creates its own, self-contained chromatic universe, and each functions within that universe in a structurally self-sufficient way. The sheer complexity is unrivalled in the abstract painting of the era. It might well be argued that, in this sense, Mark Rothko takes a distant second place to Richard Diebenkorn” (Jane Livingstone in: Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, (and travelling), The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, 1997, p. 65).

Following twelve years of boldly considered figurative painting, the Ocean Park series witnessed Diebenkorn occupy the space between figuration and abstraction with lyrical ease. Unbeholden to artistic orthodoxy of any variety Diebenkorn left a legacy as an iconoclastic alternative to the dominant strain of art in his time. Thus, like Willem de Kooning, Diebenkorn honoured both figuration and abstraction, never abandoning one for the other; indeed, traces of each co-exist within the other throughout his oeuvre. Containing the very essence of this important corpus within its intimate parameters, the present work distils the groundbreaking pictorial innovations for which Diebenkorn is today celebrated.