拍品專文
After two seminal periods in his artistic development in Albuquerque and Urbana, Illinois, Richard Diebenkorn moved to Berkeley, California in 1953 where he executed the exuberant Berkeley Series of paintings and drawings. The Berkeley Series was the culmination of the artist's fusion of painting and drawing with his visual interpretation of the natural landscape.
Upon his return to California, he was invigorated by the light of the Bay Area landscape and his palette burst into vibrant colors applied with action-filled Abstract Expressionist brushstrokes. As his art became less representational and less dependent on line, he began to "open up full throttle (and paint) in his own lyrical and expansive way an inspired series of Abstract Expressionist canvases of the first importance" (M. Tuchman, Diebenkorn's Early Years, Richard Diebenkorn Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1980, Buffalo 1980, p. 23).
Berkeley #66 is highly characteristic of the series and especially compelling in its vibrant coloration, its emphatic application of paint and its activated surface which denies spatial illusion. Diebenkorn described his process of composing these paintings so that "every hue and every variation is in the picture. I would ask, how much further can I go, what further break in the color system can I make?...It wasn't fun unless all the colors, all the characters, were present" (ibid., p. 24).
The Berkeley paintings are of particular importance because they mark the successful integration of Diebenkorn's ideas and impulses up to that time, and represent a fully mature body of work. "The ambiguity of pre-Berkeley pictures is now suffused into the most agitated and spontaneous painting Diebenkorn has ever made. The exhilarated gaiety is held in check by seriousness; the stroking is never excessively exuberant or perfervid, being restrained by strong architectonic structure" (ibid., p. 23).
Upon his return to California, he was invigorated by the light of the Bay Area landscape and his palette burst into vibrant colors applied with action-filled Abstract Expressionist brushstrokes. As his art became less representational and less dependent on line, he began to "open up full throttle (and paint) in his own lyrical and expansive way an inspired series of Abstract Expressionist canvases of the first importance" (M. Tuchman, Diebenkorn's Early Years, Richard Diebenkorn Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1980, Buffalo 1980, p. 23).
Berkeley #66 is highly characteristic of the series and especially compelling in its vibrant coloration, its emphatic application of paint and its activated surface which denies spatial illusion. Diebenkorn described his process of composing these paintings so that "every hue and every variation is in the picture. I would ask, how much further can I go, what further break in the color system can I make?...It wasn't fun unless all the colors, all the characters, were present" (ibid., p. 24).
The Berkeley paintings are of particular importance because they mark the successful integration of Diebenkorn's ideas and impulses up to that time, and represent a fully mature body of work. "The ambiguity of pre-Berkeley pictures is now suffused into the most agitated and spontaneous painting Diebenkorn has ever made. The exhilarated gaiety is held in check by seriousness; the stroking is never excessively exuberant or perfervid, being restrained by strong architectonic structure" (ibid., p. 23).