Untitled [reclining nude with her right arm raised] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this nude drawing with ink on paper. Look at the way the wash is applied, almost like he flooded the paper with diluted ink, allowing the figure to emerge from the shadows. The ink is thin and transparent, staining the paper like watercolor. I notice how the dark areas, like the hair and the shadows under her body, are built up with multiple layers of wash. There’s a real sense of the hand here, the way he lets the ink bleed and drip. See the texture he creates with short, choppy strokes around the figure, like a kind of energetic haze. This reminds me a bit of de Kooning’s drawings - how he would use erasures and smudges to create a sense of movement and ambiguity. Diebenkorn is also pushing and pulling at the image, never letting it settle into a fixed form. It’s like he’s inviting us to see the world as a process of constant becoming, not a static thing.