Fully illustrated catalogue available
Greenberg Van Doren Gallery is pleased to present Richard Diebenkorn: Prints 1961 - 1992, a solo exhibition featuring prints by Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993), organized in cooperation with the Estate of Richard Diebenkorn. The exhibition will be on view from April 26th to June 29th, 2012. A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Kathan Brown has been published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Culling work from four facets of Diebenkorn’s print oeuvre: figures and landscapes, Ocean Park, Clubs and Spades and illustrated poems by W.B. Yeats, this exhibition reflects the breadth and diversity of his work in various print media. Diebenkorn primarily made prints at Crown Point Press, from its inception in 1962, every year except one, until his death in 1993, where he focused on etching. Under the auspices of Crown Point Press, Diebenkorn traveled to Japan in the 1980s to work with woodcuts at the Shi-un-do Print Shop in Kyoto. He also worked in lithography at Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc. in the 1960s and Gemini G.E.L. in the 1980s.
Diebenkorn’s production of prints throughout his career certainly informed his approach to drawing and painting. Crown Point Press founder, Kathan Brown, discusses Diebenkorn’s affinity for the printmaking process:
"Richard Diebenkorn’s works in color etching, especially the large aquatint titled Green, are among the most celebrated of our time, and this exhibition provides rare pleasures in that regard. But don’t overlook the black and white etchings, full of surprises and intimacies. Diebenkorn spoke of them as “a way of drawing” and used them to test formal ideas and sometimes to figure out what was “wrong” with a painting in progress. He wouldn’t have been seriously involved with printmaking if he hadn’t gained insight from it…. Diebenkorn made prints not only to see his images in the unfamiliar territory of reversal, but also to make them in an unfamiliar way. The processes of etching and drypoint don’t allow a drawing to be fully seen until it is printed."
Monumental and intimately sized, these works range from sketched and linear figures and landscapes to layered abstract panels of color, often with inset intricately detailed areas merging geometric and organic forms in swathes of color. Forms and marks diffuse into one another creating complex relationships between mottled colors, distinguishable strokes, graphic lines and opaque and translucent pigments. Diebenkorn’s prints highlight both the subtle and bold qualities afforded by the many aspects of this distinctive medium.