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Foreword
Richard Benefield and Julian Cox
Description: Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné (Volume 1: Essays and References)
Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné (Volume 1: Essays and References)
In the decades following World War II, Richard Diebenkorn established himself as a singular figure in the history of American art. Because he worked both abstractly and representationally, rejecting arbitrary allegiances to any particular movement, his work is not easily defined or categorized. He hewed to a deeply personal vision, one characterized by an attachment to both landscape and the human...
Author
Richard Benefield and Julian Cox
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2016 Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21742
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Foreword
Richard Benefield, Acting Director of Museums
Julian Cox, Chief Curator
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
In the decades following World War II, Richard Diebenkorn established himself as a singular figure in the history of American art. Because he worked both abstractly and representationally, rejecting arbitrary allegiances to any particular movement, his work is not easily defined or categorized. He hewed to a deeply personal vision, one characterized by an attachment to both landscape and the human figure. Open to both tradition and innovation, he absorbed the insights of older modernist masters such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Piet Mondrian, along with those of his Abstract Expressionist and Bay Area Figurative contemporaries, a synthesis of early and later modernism that in retrospect seems remarkably prescient.
As the works, essays, and insights offered in this catalogue raisonné attest, Richard Diebenkorn’s legacy is of international significance. His evolution as an artist—despite significant working periods in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Urbana, Illinois—is inextricably linked with California, particularly the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. For decades California collectors, critics, art historians, and curators have proudly claimed Diebenkorn as one of their own.
On behalf of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, we are honored to introduce the Richard Diebenkorn catalogue raisonné. The scholarship represented in these volumes will help ensure the artist’s rightful place in the history of twentieth-century art.