Richard Diebenkorn
Featured on the SlateNational Medal of Arts Winner Richard Diebenkorn was best known for his avant-garde, abstract paintings, including his renowned Ocean Park series.
Artist PortfolioRichard Diebenkorn grew up in San Francisco, attended Stanford University and, as a young Marine stationed at Camp Quantico, visited museums in Washington, D.C. and New York. There, he saw work that inspired his own drawings of fellow soldiers, his surroundings and a few abstractions. After WWII, Diebenkorn returned to the Bay Area to study at the California School of Fine Arts, which was known as a hub of Abstract Expressionism. After his return to Berkeley in 1953, his work explores perspective and ideas of flatness, line and color. Diebenkorn turned to the figure in 1955, meeting once a week with fellow Bay Area Figurative artists to draw from the model. He moved to Southern California in 1966 to teach at UCLA, returning to abstraction and embarking on his celebrated Ocean Park series.
