Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922-1993

Richard Diebenkorn is best known for bringing a distinctly West Coast perspective to Abstract Expressionism. With oil and acrylic, the artist made layered, gestural, and geometric paintings that took inspiration from American landscapes. While his style may evoke the canvases of Willem de Kooning, Diebenkorn masterfully set himself apart as he used color and light to create a sense of place—particularly in his soft-hued “Ocean Park” series, inspired by the Santa Monica suburb he called home.

In a career spanning four decades, Diebenkorn exhibited prolifically across the United States and, in 1978, represented the nation at the Venice Biennale. Today, his work regularly sells for eight figures at auction and can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Along with his landscapes, Diebenkorn painted intimate portraits that hover between abstraction and figuration.