Continuing through June 30, 2025

Richard Diebenkorn? If you are reading this, you are almost certain to be familiar with his name and the work associated with it. Even though he passed away 32 years ago, his paintings and drawings have remained an enduring touchstone, even as the subsequent tides of artworld style have risen and receded many times over. In fact, Diebenkorn’s paintings are still routinely imitated by countless painters who have sought to balance improvisatory paint handling with formal rigor to produce imaginative pictorial structures. 

Given this brief, is there anything left unsaid about Diebenkorn’s work? The answer is yes. One reason is that, despite the artist’s longstanding prominence, the critical literature surrounding his work is surprisingly thin, and too often mired in hagiographic recitations of well-known biographical facts. Another reason is addressed by this tight selection of 22 prints executed between 1980 and 1992, highlighting Diebenkorn’s under-recognized work as a printmaker. Drawn from the archives of Crown Point Press and the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, the show coincides with the recent publication of a two-volume catalog raisonné of Diebenkorn’s prints just released by Yale University Press.

Diebenkorn began making prints with Crown Point Press in 1962, but the focus of this exhibition is on work produced at a much later chapter of his career, just before and after his 1986 return to the Bay Area after a two-decade residence in Santa Monica. By that time, health Issues were making it difficult for him to continue making large-scale paintings, leading him to shift his focus more towards printmaking and other works on paper.

The works here are subdivided into a few distinct groups that correspond to the stylistic idioms of Diebenkorn’s late paintings. Quite a few can be called multi-generational, not because they incorporate digital tools that did not exist during Diebenkorn’s lifetime, but because they synthesize different printmaking methodologies into rich, complex and multi-layered images. Even their darkest hues reveal subtle modulations of color. 

Among these, “Touched Red” (1991) is a standout that echoes the compositional structures of his “Ocean Park” series. It manifests as a series of torqued vertical planes that seem to advance and recede in a rhythmic cadence. This effect is achieved by the rich color saturations that were achieved by the combination of spit bite and aquatint techniques. 

Similarly, “Small Thin” (1980) balances precarious structure and aqueous lyricism, achieved by the combination of soft ground etching with aquatint. Diebenkorn displays deftness with etching tools in this and other works, infusing them with the same graceful finesse with which he used pencil, charcoal, and brush. Critics have long remarked on his indebtedness to Henri Matisse, but these works also emphasize the influence of Paul Klee, previously overlooked in the critical literature.

There is another cluster of prints from 1982 that reflect Diebenkorn’s “Clubs and Spades” series. Three drypoints of deep black on white paper and two more in color, are all bold and decisive. These are all variations on the common playing card image of the singular spade, stretched and buckled as if being subjected to internal and external pressures, but still anchoring the page as a perfectly positioned gestalt in which instability is marshaled into balance. The ghost of Hokusai’s “Great Wave” can be felt lurking within these works.

“Folsom Street Variations” (1986) is a triptych with a moody black, grey and white print on the left and a brightly colored red and yellow variation on the right. The central print is a transitional blend of the elements of the other two. Seen together, the three make a stunning statement about the fluctuating relationship between tonality and chromaticism, not to mention presence and evocation. 

A related print from the same year, “Red, Yellow, Blue” also balances bold primary colors with a nervy, linear scaffolding that equates precarious structure with a sound formal architecture. This print comes with an adjacent set of 5 working proofs that visually chart how Diebenkorn developed his idea for the print. Three key insights are revealed by these proofs. First is the round-about way that Diebenkorn revised the final image, with fits and starts fully revealed. The second is how he often started with linear elements before laying in color and atmospheric effects, reversing the lean-to-fat orthodoxy of the painterly process. The third is how they reveal that Diebenkorn’s primary subject was a disciplined balancing of diverse elements, which should be the starting point for any new scholarship about Diebenkorn’s work.