Richard Diebenkorn valuation
Abstract, then figurative, then Ocean Park — Californian light held in geometry.
Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland in 1922, grew up in San Francisco, and made his name with abstract painting in the early 1950s before doing something almost nobody did in that decade: turning back to the figure, becoming a central member of the Bay Area Figurative movement with David Park and Elmer Bischoff.
What a work by Richard Diebenkorn is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland in 1922, grew up in San Francisco, and made his name with abstract painting in the early 1950s before doing something almost nobody did in that decade: turning back to the figure, becoming a central member of the Bay Area Figurative movement with David Park and Elmer Bischoff. In 1967 he moved to Santa Monica and began Ocean Park, the series of some 140 large canvases and many works on paper that occupied him until 1988 — flat planes of light-filled colour, ruled and re-ruled, with the corrections left visible. He died in 1993.
Ocean Park leads the market by a considerable distance, and within it the large canvases are far ahead of the smaller works, though the gouaches and the acrylic-and-crayon works on paper from the same years are substantial in their own right. Diebenkorn left pentimenti and drawn construction lines deliberately exposed, and these are regularly mistaken for damage or for an unfinished state. He was also a serious printmaker with Crown Point Press. The Diebenkorn Foundation published the catalogue raisonne and is the reference for attribution.
At a glance
- Born
- 22 April 1922, Portland
- Died
- 30 March 1993, Berkeley
- Movements
- Abstract Expressionism, Bay Area Figurative Movement
More on Wikipedia.
Crown Point, the catalogue raisonné and the RA
Diebenkorn began making prints seriously in 1961 with Kathan Brown at her new Crown Point Press in Berkeley, which in 1965 published his first suite, 41 Etchings Drypoints, as thirteen bound volumes and twelve unbound folios. He made many more prints there, and a print from one of its editions should match the publisher's record.
The catalogue raisonné of his work was published in 2016, and the Royal Academy in London gave him an exhibition in 2015 covering the abstract, figurative and Ocean Park years. A painting or work on paper should be found in the catalogue raisonné.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
