Product Description

Richard Diebenkorn in New Mexico is the first comprehensive overview of internationally acclaimed artist Richard Diebenkorn's New Mexico period, which greatly influenced his artistic maturation. Features 86 seminal works from the early period of this internationally acclaimed artist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #327589 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 153 pages

Review
"...I could tell that the young artist's energetic lines nearly vibrated" -- Santa Fe Pasatiempo, August 17-23, 2007

Customer Reviews

Excellent look at period less covered
This compilation of text, 83 large scale plates and 21 additional reproductions provides an excellent look at a key period in the development of Richard Diebenkorn which is brushed by more quickly (and in each case with only a dozen reproductions) in the two major monographs on the artist by Nordland and Livingston. There are three essays, one quite brief, that could be read in less than 30 minutes were it not for the constant urge to study the large, full page color plate of the works discussed in each paragraph. Helpfully, one of the writers even includes small, supplemental reproductions of each piece adjacent to the paragraph in which the piece is discussed (in addition to the 104 other color illustrations listed above).

If you admire Diebenkorn's work, you are understandably going to focus on his figurative or his Ocean Park periods. But as auction prices demonstrate ($6 million for a 1955 Berkeley abstract piece in Nov., 2006), his earlier work at Albuquerque, Urbana and Berkeley are now being recognized as not only crucial stages of his growth but also as meaningful abstract expressionist works in their own right, influenced not just by personal interaction with Still, Rothko and Hassel Smith at the San Francisco Art Institute (then the CSFA) but also by shows of work by Gorky, de Kooning and others he was able to visit before or during his years at Albuquerque.

The book is large scale and the reproductions are of unusually high quality. After Nordland and Livingston, this is a "must have", along with the Elderfield's paperback of his drawings for his MOMA show.

Formative years in the career of a good artist who later became great.
This book accompanies an exhibition of Diebenkorn's works painted in New Mexico in the early 1950's. Wonderful illustrations make it a valuable addition to the literature on the artist. Now, you really have to be an all-out Diebenkorn fan to consider that these early works measure up to what was being painted at the same time in New York by the likes of Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Kline and Guston. Diebenkorn became great when he started the Ocean Park series in the 1970's, but here, he only reveals himself as a good colorist. The merit of this catalogue lies, in my opinion, in the high quality of the illustrations, albeit of minor works, and in the sensible text written by a leading authority on the artist.

New Mexico Masterpieces
This excellent collection represents the works produced by Richard Diebenkorn during his tenure at the University of New Mexico from 1950-52, comprising some of his most exciting abstract images. The companion exhibit at the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico once again confirms Diebenkorn's stature as one of the most influential and important abstract painters of our time.