Property from the Collection of Claudia Eitner Vintage California Post-War Painting: Bay Area Figuration and West Coast Pop Art (lots 239-248) "Art ought to be a troublesome thing, and one of my reasons for painting representationally is that this makes for much more troublesome pictures" -- David Park, 1957 "I think we have barely touched upon the real capacity of what realistic painting can do" -- Wayne Thiebaud, 1968 California has a rich history of the visual arts, and some of the most influential Post-War artists of the twentieth century have either been its inhabitants, or passed through at one time or other. Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock have some connection to the Sunshine State, and there was a particularly strong bond between San Francisco and New York during the heroic years of Abstraction Expressionism. Bay Area Figuration, the San Francisco school of Abstract Expressionism, Beat poets and painters and West Coast Pop artists are just a few of the so-called California "schools" that have made enduring contributions. California galleries and museums have mounted historically important exhibitions, including Andy Warhol's first exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in 1961, Clyfford Still's and Richard Diebenkorn's first museum exhibitions of mature work at the California Palace Legion of Honor, in 1947 and 1948, respectively, and countless others. Although it is impossible to quantify a "California aesthetic," there are a number of tendencies that have particularly flourished, namely Bay Area Figurative painting and Pop Art. Christie's is fortunate to be offering superb examples of late 1950s and early 1960s paintings by recognized Bay Area masters, including David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Paul Wonner, Nathan Oliveira and Joan Brown, as well as vintage Pop paintings by Wayne Thiebaud. "The Bay Area Figurative movement, which grew out of and was in reaction to both West Coast and East Coast varieties of Abstract Expressionism, was a local phenomenon and yet was responsive to the most topical national tendencies" (C. Jones, Bay Area Figurative Art, 1950-1965, San Francisco, 1989, p. XV). Indeed, abstraction became so dominant as the avant-garde style that it was suffocating to many young artists, who wanted to create works that were fresh and innovative and yet at the same time, avoid what many considered the pitfalls of the figurative Social Realist works of the 1930's. David Park, formerly an abstract painter, began painting representational works in 1951, and was soon followed by Elmer Bischoff and a few years later, Richard Diebenkorn, Paul Wonner. As Park put it, "I miss the sting that I believe a more descriptive reference to some fixed subject can make. Quite often, even the very fine non-objective canvases seem to me to be so visually beautiful that I find them insufficiently troublesome, not personal enough" (quoted in Ibid, p. 2). To the chagrin of many of the participants, the movement was codified in 1957 when Paul Mills, curator of the Oakland Museum mounted Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, which traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio. Two main tendencies run throughout the movement, although each artist departs from them in their own way. Firstly, the artists embraced representation, realizing it with gestural paint application, but with a resistance to the "requirement that the artist's personality or subconscious by the source of all imagery" and secondly, "the work portrays physical attributes associated with California (such as deep, saturated colors and the play of strong sunlight) and often depicts pastoral or suburban subject matter" (Ibid, p. 3). Diebenkorn, an artist who re-invented himself over the course of his career, moved from figuration to abstraction throughout his career. A sumptuous painting, Seated Woman (Lot 239) is a classic figurative work from 1963. His signature Ocean Park paintings, which he began in 1967, are represented by two superb paintings on paper, one from 1974 (Lot 247), and another example from 1980 from the Edward R. Broida collection (to be offered on November 9 in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening sale). Although Wayne Thiebaud saw the Bay Area exhibition in 1957, his work took a decidedly different path. Thiebaud, and artists such as Mel Ramos, is associated with the West Coast brand of Pop Art. Thiebaud's deliciously painted food, objects and landscapes are relatively rare to the market and we are fortunate to have four examples, including a painting of a gun, flower, landscape and the artist's signature image, a slice of pie.

Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993)

Seated Woman

Details

Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993)
Seated Woman
gouache on printed paper
20 x 14½ in. (50.8 x 36.8 cm.)
Painted in 1963.

Provenance

Lorenz Eitner, Palo Alto, gift of the artist, 1963
By descent to the present owner

Exhibited

Stanford University Art Museum, Richard Diebenkorn, 1922-1993: Stanford Remembers, July-September 1993.

Lot Essay

Throughout his career, Richard Diebenkorn explored painting through both abstraction and traditional genre painting. There is fluidity between his different types of painting. His abstractions developed directly from his studies of form in his figurative, landscapes and still-life paintings. His vision reinvigorated these genres in avant-garde American painting. To this point he remarked, "Just as I once believed that spatial ambiguities, intensity spelled out, and infinite suggestibility were necessary properties of painting I now believe that the representation of men, women, walls, windows, and cups are necessary" (R. Diebenkorn quoted in J. Livingston, The Art of Richard Diebenkorn exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1997, p. 50).

Seated Woman exemplifies the finest of Diebenkorn's figurative work: it depicts a women reclining on a large yellow chair with her face turned away from the viewer, set against a brightly colored interior. Diebenkorn's magnificent painting, with its large brushstrokes, geometric forms and bold colors highly resonates with the affinities of modern artists such as Matisse and Bonnard.

Seated Woman was painted in gouache on the announcement for Diebenkorn's drawings exhibition at Stanford University in 1964. He presented the painting as a gift of thanks to Lorenzo Eitner for his involvement with the exhibition. Diebenkorn had a long history with Stanford University, his alma mater. It was there that he fell in love with Edward Hopper's figurative works marking a significant development in his artistry. Diebenkorn's emotionally charged depiction of a woman in an interior setting not only shows Hopper's influence but also signifies a resurgence of figurative painting in California. Seated Woman is part of a series of work that influenced a generation of painters and revived an interest in the California art scene.

Seated Woman

Lot Essay

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