Untitled [seated female nude with leg pulled into chair] [recto] 1955 - 1967

This is a drawing, an ‘Untitled’ one, made by Richard Diebenkorn, who sketched a seated female nude with charcoal on paper. Just look at that leg, pulled up into the chair! It’s such a tender, vulnerable pose. I can imagine Diebenkorn circling around the figure, trying to capture the weight and the gesture, the charcoal scratching and whispering on the page. Each line feels so tentative, like a question asked and then re-asked, slightly adjusted. The repeated lines around the figure are the artist’s way of feeling his way through the space, like he’s not quite sure where the edges of the body begin and end. I can feel the artist’s uncertainty and probing, echoing other artists like Giacometti, and I can see how it’s all feeding into something bigger than just this drawing. It’s about how artists are always looking, testing, and figuring things out together!