Explore the Era

Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.

Ocean Park No. 67

Ocean Park No. 67

Ocean Park No. 67, 1973, Richard Diebenkorn. Oil on canvas. 100 x 81 in. The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection. © The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn, Catalogue Raisonné #1482

Richard Diebenkorn moved to Los Angeles from Berkeley in 1966, and settled in Santa Monica, drawn to that area by the quality of the light. In 1967 he began the Ocean Park paintings and drawings, his best-known body of work. This remarkable series splits a hairline difference between abstraction and representation. The artist acknowledged the works’ real-world referents: their boxlike compartments, often further subdivided by wedges and diagonals, correspond to boundaries both within the landscape—between sea and land (literally, ocean and park)—and between natural and human-made elements. Certain configurations suggest architectural structures, others the changing conditions of the light that filtered through the transom windows in Diebenkorn’s studio.

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Exhibition audio: Curator Andrew Perchuk discusses Diebenkorn’s work.

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Works of Art

  • Ocean Park No. 26

    Ocean Park No. 26, 1970, Richard Diebenkorn. Oil on canvas. 89 x 81 in. Nerman Family Collection. © The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn, Catalogue Raisonné #2415

Explore the Archive

  • Video: Sarah Bancroft on Richard Diebenkorn

    Video: Sarah Bancroft speaks about Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series, June 2011

  • Richard Diebenkorn

    Richard Diebenkorn in his studio at Main Street and Ashland Avenue in Santa Monica, ca. 1970–71. Photo by Richard Grant. Courtesy of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation and Richard Grant

  • Richard Diebenkorn with 'Cityscape'

    Richard Diebenkorn in front of his painting Cityscape in his Stanford University studio in Palo Alto, California, 1963. Photo by Leo Holub. Courtesy of The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

  • Richard Diebenkorn in his studio

    Richard Diebenkorn painting in his triangle studio in Berkeley, California, 1962. Photo by Phyllis Diebenkorn. Courtesy of The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation