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Richard Diebenkorn was born in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, and moved to San Francisco during early childhood. He maintained an interest in drawing and painting throughout his school years but did not seriously consider a career as an artist until enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942. Following his military service, Diebenkorn lived and worked in various locations across the United States, including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Woodstock, New York; and Urbana, Illinois, before returning to the Bay Area in 1953. The distinctive light and landscape of California would become lasting influences on his artistic practice.
Printmaking was an integral part of Diebenkorn’s career, and he produced a significant body of more than 150 master graphics. He was drawn to the deliberate yet often unpredictable nature of the medium, using it as a means to further explore the formal concerns of his drawings and paintings. He experimented with lithography, woodcut, and monotype in the 1950s at the California School of Fine Arts and the University of New Mexico. However, his printmaking practice did not truly flourish until he began working with Kathan Brown at Northern California’s Crown Point Press in 1962.
Diebenkorn focused on drypoint in his early collaborations with Brown, which he viewed as a form of drawing, and often turned to printmaking when he encountered creative blocks in his painting. Since the incised image on the metal plate appears in reverse and cannot be fully visualized until after inking and printing, drypoint offered Diebenkorn a fresh perspective on his compositions. He took to studying his plates with a mirror and extended the method to his paintings, revealing hidden flaws and uncovering new possibilities. His initial printmaking experiments are primarily representational and closely tied to the Bay Area Figurative Movement. However, traces of his earlier exploration of abstract expressionism can be seen in his dynamic still lifes and portraits.
In 1964, Richard and Phyllis Diebenkorn traveled to Russia as participants in a cultural exchange program. Although the visit was clouded by the underlying tensions of the Cold War, it was transformative in Diebenkorn’s development as an artist. At the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, he encountered important works of modern art that had been seized from the distinguished collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Diebenkorn was struck by the paintings of Henri Matisse and was particularly drawn to the rich color and compressed perspective of the artist’s major work, The Conversation. Shortly after, the Diebenkorn’s moved to Santa Monica, marking the inception of Diebenkorn’s acclaimed Ocean Park series.
Image: Richard Diebenkorn at Crown Point Press studio, Oakland, 1980
The Ocean Park works reflect a synthesis of Diebenkorn’s early gestural abstraction with the formal structure developed during his Berkeley figurative period. These compositions are often interpreted as abstracted aerial views of the Southern California landscape, characterized by luminous expanses of pastel hues and carefully arranged geometric forms. Depth arises from subtle shifts in tone and spatial relationships across endlessly varied permutations.
In 1980, Diebenkorn produced a technically ambitious series of color aquatints at Crown Point Press, including Small Thin, Small Red, Large Bright Blue, Large Light Blue, Construct (Red), Construct (Grid), Construct (Drypoint), and Blue Loop, which embody the spirit of the Ocean Park series. He approached the project with focused intensity, meticulously working and reworking the plates to achieve the refined color relationships and elegant restraint that define his mature style.
For a brief period in the early 1980s, Diebenkorn stepped away from his Ocean Park imagery to create a grouping of prints known as the Clubs and Spades series. Intimate in scale, these works were undoubtedly personal. This phase coincided with his mother’s illness, when he found himself unable to concentrate on painting. The heraldic motifs reflect Diebenkorn’s nostalgia for tales of chivalry, first introduced to him in childhood by his maternal grandmother. Richard also gifted Phyllis a club-shaped pendant necklace, which she wore throughout her life.
When Diebenkorn returned to Ocean Park imagery in 1982, he produced his most demanding print to date: Blue Surround. The aquatint went through twenty-three working proofs before he considered it complete. He later pushed the medium even further in his seminal print, Green. The monumental work was initially conceived as a collage, reflecting the continued influence of Matisse. The project was challenging for both Diebenkorn and the printers at Crown Point Press. Proofs were set aside at one point, but Diebenkorn later returned to the composition by incorporating elements from a concurrent project, Indigo Horizontal He completed Green with renewed energy marked by precision, and improvisation, demonstrating his comfort with uncertainty.
Diebenkorn did not confine his printmaking practice to intaglio or lithography. In 1983 and again in 1987, he traveled to Japan to produce a series of woodblock prints at the Shi-un-do Print Shop in Kyoto. Collaborating with master printer Tadashi Toda, Diebenkorn adapted his layered compositions to the aesthetic parameters of traditional Japanese woodcut techniques. Ochre and Blue with Red translate Diebenkorn’s visual language into a medium characterized by restraint and planar simplicity.
In the late 1980s, Richard and Phyllis Diebenkorn left Santa Monica and embarked on an extended road trip in search of a new home. Eventually returning to Northern California, they settled in Healdsburg. However, the artist’s health soon began to decline. While this limited his ability to produce large-scale paintings, the collaborative nature of printmaking allowed him to continue working. It was during this period that he created High Green Version I and Touched Red, celebrated Ocean Park prints which cemented his reputation as one of the foremost printmakers of the postwar era.
Richard Diebenkorn
Green, 1986
Aquatint and drypoint
Sheet size: 53 1/2 x 40 5/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 60, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 294
Initialed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Richard Diebenkorn
Blue Surround, 1982
Aquatint with etching and drypoint
Sheet size: 35 x 26 1/2 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 284
Initialed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Large Bright Blue, 1980
Aquatint and etching
Sheet size: 39 5/8 x 26 1/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 263
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Richard Diebenkorn
Twelve, 1986
Lithograph
Sheet size: 44 x 34 1/4 inches
Printer and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Edition: 50, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 309
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Richard Diebenkorn
Small Thin, 1980
Aquatint and etching
Sheet size: 26 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 265
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Small Red, 1980
Aquatint and etching
Sheet size: 26 1/4 x 18 7/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 262
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Blue with Red, 1987
Sheet size: 37 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches
Printer: Tadashi Toda at Shi-un-do Print Shop, Kyoto, Japan
Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 200, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 300
Initialed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Ochre, 1983
Woodcut
Sheet size: 27 1/4 x 38 1/8 inches
Printer: Tadashi Toda at Shi-un-do Print Shop, Kyoto, Japan
Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 200, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 288
Initialed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
High Green Version I, 1992
Color aquatint
Sheet size: 52 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 65, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 345
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Richard Diebenkorn
Touched Red, 1991
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint
Sheet size: 35 5/8 x 26 3/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 85, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 341
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Untitled, 1970
Lithograph
Sheet size: 29 1/4 x 18 7/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles
Edition: 20, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 162
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Tri-color, 1981
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint
Sheet size: 30 1/4 x 22 3/4 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 272
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Spreading Spade, 1981
Aquatint and drypoint
Sheet size: 36 1/2 x 30 3/4 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 277
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Blue Club, 1981
Etching and aquatint
Sheet size: 37 1/4 x 30 3/4 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 274
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Image: Richard Diebenkorn at Crown Point Press, Oakland, 1982
Richard Diebenkorn
Clubs—Blue Ground, 1982
Aquatint, etching, and drypoint
Sheet size: 33 x 26 3/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 283
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Reclining Figure II, 1962
Lithograph
Sheet size: 26 x 19 1/2 inches
Printer and Publisher: Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles
Edition: 20, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 153
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Seated Woman, 1968
Transfer lithograph
Sheet size: 19 7/8 x 25 inches
Printer and Publisher: Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri
Edition: 20, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 182
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Cup and Saucer, 1965
Lithograph
Sheet size: 17 1/8 x 17 1/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Original Press, San Francisco Edition: 50, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 169
Initialed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Richard Diebenkorn
Woman Seated at a Table, 1967
Lithograph
Sheet size: 30 x 22 inches
Printer and Publisher: Collectors Press, San Francisco
Edition: 75, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 178
Initialed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Richard Diebenkorn
Folsom Street Variation I (black), 1986
Aquatint
Sheet size: 25 1/2 x 33 7/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 60, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 295
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Folsom Street Variation II (grey), 1986
Etching and aquatint
Sheet size: 26 1/2 x 40 1/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 60, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 294
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Folsom Street Variation III (primaries), 1986
Aquatint, etching, and drypoint
Sheet size: 26 1/2 x 40 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 60, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 297
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Construct (Grid), 1980
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint
Sheet size: 26 1/4 x 18 7/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 261
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Construct (Red), 1980
Aquatint and etching
Sheet size: 27 5/8 x 19 3/4 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 267
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Construct (Drypoint), 1980
Aquatint, etching, and drypoint
Sheet size: 19 3/4 x 26 1/8 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 35, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 266
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
Richard Diebenkorn
Two Way II, 1982
Aquatint, ink transfer, and drypoint
Sheet size: 37 x 26 1/2 inches
Printer and Publisher: Crown Point Press, San Francisco
Edition: 40, plus proofs
Catalogue Raisonné: Liguori 287
Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil
Provenance: Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, Berkeley, CA
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