Untitled [seated nude leaning on her left arm] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this drawing with graphite on paper, depicting a seated nude leaning on her left arm. There's something so raw and immediate about this drawing, isn't there? You can almost feel Diebenkorn's hand moving across the page, capturing the weight and form of the figure with these quick, searching lines. I imagine him, squinting at the model, trying to distill the essence of her pose with each stroke. There's a tension between the precision of observation and the freedom of expression. Like, look at the face, those scribbled lines that somehow convey so much. Diebenkorn was always in dialogue with the history of painting, and I see echoes of Matisse in the fluidity of the line, the way he suggests volume with such economy. It's like he's saying, "Here's what I see, here's how I feel," all in one gesture. It reminds us that drawing, like painting, is an ongoing conversation, a way of thinking through seeing.