From Georgia O’Keeffe to Stuart Davis, American artists have long been attracted to the desert landscape of New Mexico. Among them is California artist Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993), who spent 30 months in Albuquerque pursuing a master’s degree at the University of New Mexico with the help of GI Bill benefits.
During this period from 1950 to 1952, Mr. Diebenkorn created some of the freest but least known paintings of his career.
The first exhibition devoted to these unfamiliar works is now on view at the Phillips Collection, where 45 paintings and drawings, plus a rare metal sculpture, widen the view of Mr. Diebenkorn’s accomplishments.
Organized by the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art, this vibrant show traces the artist’s restless search for his own identity within the abstract expressionism of the postwar era. It veers from cartoon-inspired images of people and animals to layers of free-form shapes suggestive of landscapes.
Pulsing through these unrestrained works is an investigative energy uncharacteristic of Mr. Diebenkorn’s later figurative scenes and refined “Ocean Park” series of abstractions. His intense exploration is reflected in blotches of color and scrawling lines pushed outward to the edges of the canvas to suggest a continuation of their irregularities outside the frame.
The artist’s willingness to experiment, the exhibit notes, came from his immersion in the Southwestern landscape, away from the influences of New York and San Francisco. By the time he arrived in New Mexico at age 27, Mr. Diebenkorn was a fairly experienced painter who already had exhibited his work in museums. He had spent three years teaching at the California School of Fine Arts alongside artists such as New York giants Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, and was ready to focus full time on his art.
In Albuquerque, Mr. Diebenkorn and his family moved into a ranch near the Rio Grande where inspiration came from the mesas, mountains and big skies, but not in a literal way. As the artist was quoted in a 1957 publication, “In Albuquerque, I relaxed and began to think of natural forms in relation to my own feelings.”
His palette became brighter and his shapes grew looser in response to the colors and wide expanses of the New Mexican desert without suggesting the specifics of place. In “Untitled (Albuquerque),” from 1952, red, mustard yellow and dark gray are layered like the rock strata of a canyon. Other patchwork abstractions were stimulated by aerial views of the landscape seen by the artist on his airplane trips through the West.
Lines of all sorts - looping, crossed, jagged - assume a particular importance in outlining shapes, standing on their own and barely appearing as ghostly vestiges. Like the musical notes of jazz, the linework animates the layers of paint with a syncopated rhythm spread across the paper and canvas.
Yet for all his risk-taking in New Mexico, Mr. Diebenkorn never entirely broke free of artistic influences from this period. He saw New York painter Willem de Kooning’s black and white abstractions reproduced in a 1948 magazine and proceeded to create similarly dark, swirling paintings. The quirky calligraphic style of Arshile Gorky led to paintings of disjointed ovals and blobs, and a book of Krazy Kat cartoons spurred a series of splattered ink drawings, including one resembling a hand-holding couple under a crescent moon and stars.
At the same time, Mr. Diebenkorn advanced his vision to foreshadow later artistic developments. “Albuquerque 8” centers on a big swath of dripping yellow paint to anticipate 1960’s Color Field painting. “Albuquerque 4,” a particularly bright abstraction marked with a target and cross, and “Untitled (Albuquerque),” from 1951, with its fragmented alphabet letters and bulbous head, hint at pop art.
Mr. Diebenkorn didn’t push these avant-garde directions further after he returned to San Francisco, but instead retreated to figurative painting and more structured abstractions. Several such works from the Phillips’ holdings are displayed on the main floor to reveal the artist’s about-face after his sojourn in New Mexico.
Included in this grouping is the 1957 “Interior With View of Ocean,” which was purchased by Duncan Phillips the following year, as well as its source of inspiration, “Studio, Quai St. Michel” by French painter Henri Matisse.
Mr. Diebenkorn knew this 1916 painting well, having frequently visited the Phillips Collection in the mid-1940s while stationed at the Marine Corps training camp in Quantico, Va. As it turned out, the museum’s early modernist paintings proved more influential on his studied, later work than the rugged environment of New Mexico.
WHEN YOU GO
WHAT: “Diebenkorn in New Mexico”
WHERE: Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW
WHEN: Through Sept. 7; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday except until 8:30 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
ADMISSION: $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, free for museum members and visitors 18 and younger
PHONE: 202/387-2151
WEB SITE: www.phillips collection.org
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