Berkeley #32

With its rich tapestry of intertwining forms, Richard Diebenkorn’s Berkeley #32 is one of the finest examples of the expressive brushstrokes that define this important series of paintings. Packing the surface with a mix of visual elements, dexterous painted lines jostle with large areas of deep blue and rich red color, each tussling for attention. While refreshingly modern in its execution, the work is also a supreme example of the artist’s debt to those he considered the heroes of art history, in particular his beloved Matisse. Diebenkorn leaves areas of pentimenti intentionally visible and combines this with the aqueous fluidity of the paint application to give the painting a fresh yet subtle spontaneity. Describing this period, the critic Thomas Albright said, “Returning to strong, vivid colors—emphasizing tart, acidulous greens, hot, dry salmons and deep full-bodied blues—Diebenkorn built up rich, juicy paint surfaces. They were arranged in loose but well defined color planes, that plunged diagonally into space, setting up an acute ‘birds-eye’ perspective. The strongest of these paintings achieved an extraordinary balance between abstraction and dizzying panoramas of natural landscape” (T. Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, Berkeley, 1985, p. 65). Widely exhibited and cited in literature on the artist, Berkeley #32 stands as the pinnacle of one of the artist’s most important bodies of work.

Berkeley #32 follows in a long and honorable tradition of artists’ responses to landscapes of the American West. For generations of painters, the countryside of the U.S. interior has held a unique fascination and almost spiritual significance and inspired some of this country’s greatest painters. Yet Diebenkorn’s inherently modern response to the emotional pull of the American landscape is formed out of desire to build on the traditions of the past. His Abstract Expressionist inclinations demanded that he found a way of invoking a new vision of the topography that he so loved. His solution was to come after he took a plane journey from Albuquerque to San Francisco in 1951. The unique aerial view of the countryside this trip provided revealed the range of possibilities of this unusual way of looking at the landscape. He stated, “The aerial view showed me a rich variety of ways of treating a flat plane—like flattened mud or paint. Forms operating in shallow depth reveal a huge range of possibilities for the painter” (R. Diebenkorn quoted in G. Nordland, Richard Diebenkorn, New York, 2001, p.43). This quality of flatness which so enthralled Diebenkorn is what makes Berkeley #32 such an exceptional example of this important series. The central portion, made up of a swath of patchwork colors, is almost entirely enclosed by two bands of solid color, one bright and one dark, that skillfully excludes all pretense of perception. By letting go of formal compositional elements Diebenkorn focuses attention on what, to him, is important—the careful application of paint on canvas.

The patchwork of expressive brushstrokes, crisscrossed with impulsive and meandering lines, define areas of an almost biomorphic quality which celebrate the fluid quality of the paint. True to his abstract expressionist roots, Diebenkorn is not interested in re-creating the awe-inspiring majesty of the pioneers of American landscape painters. Instead he is inspired to let the rich textures of the paint on the surface of the canvas create the sense of excitement and adventure that the landscape inspires. In her essay on Diebenkorn’s Berkeley paintings curator Emma Acker writes “…Diebenkorn’s palette becomes increasingly vibrant as the series progresses. The brilliant jewel tones of paintings such as… Berkeley #32… evoke the verdancy and luminosity of Northern California” (E. Acker, “A Sense of Place: Richard Diebenkorn and the Aerial View,” in T. A. Burgard, S. Nash & E. Acker (eds.), Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years 1953-1966, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2013, p. 71).

Diebenkorn began his Berkeley abstractions in 1953 after a peripatetic journey across the American countryside starting in Sausalito before continuing onto Albuquerque, Urbana and finally ending in Berkeley. His journey was as much an artistic exploration as a geographical one, and once he settled in California the artist was able to embark on a series of mature works. The resulting paintings, of which the present lot is a prime example, encapsulate many of the formal lexicons of his previous works but intertwines them with conceptual devices derived from the light, atmosphere and scenery of his new surroundings.

A sign of its importance, Berkeley #32 has been widely exhibited since it was painted in 1955, including representing the United States at the São Paolo Biennial that same year. Among other prestigious exhibitions of the artist’s work which have included the painting are a 1960 exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum entitled Richard Diebenkorn, a 1977 Albright-Knox Art Gallery survey Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1976, which travelled to Whitechapel Gallery, London, and a Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition titled Richard Diebenkorn, which also traveled, in 1997-98. It has also been widely cited in literature, including being illustrated on the cover of the exhibition catalogue for the 2013 show Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years 1953-1996 organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and also in several major monographs on the artist by the art historian Gerald Nordland.
1955, the year Berkeley #32 was painted, was a pivotal time for the artist. He had solidified everything he had learned about abstract painting and was extending this knowledge in other directions and producing works of incredible maturity. Diebenkorn’s fellow artists had recognized that a powerful new force was being developed. The Bay Area artist, Manuel Neri later commented, “It was a type of painting we hadn’t seen on the West Coast before. Diebenkorn had a wildness—not the controlled wildness of Hassel Smith but an out-of-control feeling. Those were urgent times, wild times. He brought us a new language to talk in” (M. Neri quoted by J. Livingstone. ‘The Art of Richard Diebenkorn,’ The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, New York, 1997, p. 43).

Although born on the West Coast, Diebenkorn’s early work is undoubtedly rooted in the Abstract Expressionism of the New York School. But in addition to its fluid lines and planes of color, Berkeley #32 is the artist’s response to a wide range of artists who fired his imagination. Diebenkorn’s early encounters with the work of Paul Cezánne, Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian were crucial in this development. The march towards abstraction that he witnessed from Cezánne’s collapse and juxtaposition of foreground and background, Matisse’s chromatic brilliance and organization of space within geometric scaffolds and Mondrian’s relentless, logical geometric reduction paved the course of his own non-objective works. Diebenkorn tempered the influence of European Modernism, being especially inspired by its rhetoric about the process of creation itself. Arshile Gorky’s linear biomorphic evocations against luminous chromatic background provided an early model that was followed by the agitated fragmentation of Willem de Kooning emotionally and erotically charged abstractions. Bearing the evidence of their gestation, this, along with their rough and buttery manner of paint application, had a profound consequence for Diebenkorn’s direction.

The crowning achievement of his early Abstract Expressionist works, the Berkeley series, soon became a byword for excitement and innovation. Although Diebenkorn was traveling a well-worn path, it is a testament to his skill that he was able to navigate a direction that was very much his own. His masterful painterly touch and unrivalled use of color distinguished himself from both his peers and his predecessors. The color, vivacity and energy of Berkeley #32 place it among the highlights of this important series.