Berkeley #7

Richard Diebenkorn

1953

Richard Diebenkorn, like fellow painters Sam Francis, Mark Rothko, Hassel Wendell Smith Jr., and Clyfford Still, was associated with West Coast Abstract Expressionism, a variant of the New York School. In the 1950s Diebenkorn’s abstract work was celebrated but also often set apart from the work of his East Coast contemporaries by critics who aligned its expressive qualities with the expansive landscapes of the American West. Berkeley #7 is one of a group of over fifty paintings and hundreds of drawings and watercolors the artist completed between 1953 and 1955, during his early abstract period, after moving to Berkeley, California. In the painting’s upper region, a large zone of subtly modulated brown is bisected and bordered by fleshy biomorphic shapes, while in the lower section smaller interlocking pink, yellow, and blue shapes create a more intense cluster of forms. This combination of large areas of color with smaller stacked, undulating forms as well as the earth tones of these paintings have been read as references to horizontal strata or rectilinear fields and, more specifically, to the hills and cliffs of the Bay Area. [Exhibition label, 2015]

Artist Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922–1993)
Title Berkeley #7
Date 1953
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 47 3/4 x 43 in.
Credit line Gift of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., 1962
Object number WU 4019

Technique oil painting
Work type painting
Theme Abstraction

Matisse / Diebenkorn
Baltimore Museum of Art, 10/23/2016 - 01/29/2017
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 03/11/2017 - 05/29/2017

From Picasso to Fontana: Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960–1968
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/23/2015 - 04/19/2015

Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953–1966
deYoung Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 06/22/2013 - 09/29/2013
Palm Springs Art Museum, 10/26/2013 - 02/16/2014

Gesture, Scrape, Combine, Calculate: Postwar Abstraction from the Permanent Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/20/2010 - 09/20/2010

International Abstraction: Art of the 1950s from the Washington University Collections
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/22/1999 - 03/28/1999

Abstract Expressionism: American Art in the 1950s and 1960s
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/17/1997 - 04/06/1997

Portraits and Landscapes

Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943–1976
Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1976, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 11/12/1976 - 01/09/1977
Cincinnati Art Museum, 01/31/1977 - 03/20/1977
Corcoran Gallery of Art, 04/15/1977 - 05/23/1977
Whitney Museum of American Art, 06/09/1977 - 07/17/1977
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 08/09/1977 - 09/25/1977
Oakland Museum of California, 10/15/1977 - 11/27/1977

Richard Diebenkorn
Washington Gallery of Modern Art (Washington, DC), 11/06/1964 - 12/31/1964
Jewish Museum (New York, New York), 01/13/1965 - 02/21/1965
Pavilion Gallery (Newport Beach, California), 03/14/1965 - 04/15/1965

Modern American Painting 1930–1958
York City Art Gallery (York, England), 08/15/1960 - 09/20/1960
Modern American Painting 1930–1958 [Modernt Amerikanst Maleri: 1932–1958], Göteborgs Konstmuseum (Gothenburg, Sweden), 07/15/1960 - 08/07/1960
Modern American Painting 1930–1958 [25 Anni di Pittura Americana 1933-1958], Galleria d'Arte Moderna (Rome, Italy), 01/23/1960 - 02/22/1960
Modern American Painting 1930–1958 [25 Anni di Pittura Americana 1933–1958], Palazzo della Permanente (Milan, Italy), 03/05/1960 - 03/31/1960
Modern American Painting 1930–1958 [Moderne amerikanische Malerei, 1930–1958], Hessisches Landesmuseum (Darmstadt, Germany), 06/03/1960 - 06/26/1960
Modern American Painting 1930–1958 [25 Anni di Pittura Americana 1933–1958], Palazzo Reale (Naples, Italy), 11/01/1959 - 11/30/1959
Modern American Painting 1930–1958 [Moderne amerikanische Malerei, 1930–1958], Amerika Haus (Berlin, Germany), 04/15/1960 - 05/15/1960

Diebenkorn
Paul Kantor Gallery (Los Angeles, California), 03/01/1954 - 03/30/1954

1962
Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.

Inscription [LR of canvas, in grey paint:] R.D. 53

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