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.

Richard Diebenkorn
Artist

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 (1922–1993) began painting as a student at Stanford University in the early 1940s. After serving in the Marine Corps during World War II, he returned to his studies at the California School of Fine Arts where he developed a more abstract style of painting. But by 1955, Diebenkorn turned toward representational modes, exploring landscape, still life, and figurative painting and drawing. Elements of both abstraction and figuration are visible in one of the artist’s most renowned bodies of work, the Ocean Park series, which Diebenkorn began after moving to Southern California in 1966 to teach at UCLA. Named after the part of Santa Monica where the artist’s studio was located, the Ocean Park paintings combine fields of color that allude to aerial views of land and ocean, yet remain wholly non-representational.

Historic Map Locations

Works of Art

  • 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

  • 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 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