Untitled [man standing in a landscape] [recto] 1955 - 1967

Richard Diebenkorn made this untitled painting of a man in a landscape with gouache on paper, but when? It’s a mystery, like the painting itself. The blues feel like the ocean, maybe the California coast he loved. The strokes are applied wet and juicy, a real sense of immediacy. It’s not overworked, which I admire. It’s like he's chasing something, that feeling you get when you’re painting, where it could fall apart at any moment. Look at the figure – or is it a figure? It’s barely there, just a few strokes of paint suggesting a person. The rest of the image is flat planes of color, that push and pull the space in a very modern way. It reminds me of the way Matisse used color, that willingness to sacrifice detail for the overall feeling. It’s a painting that embraces its own ambiguity, which to me, makes it feel very alive.