Untitled [study of a woman facing right] 1955 - 1967

This is a study of a woman facing right, rapidly drawn with pencil on paper by Richard Diebenkorn. The artist is feeling out the volume of the sitter in the round, all with a spare network of searching marks. This drawing feels so much about the process of the artist looking and then thinking aloud with the pencil. The lines are raw and open, mapping out the way light falls across the woman’s face and shoulders. What’s so interesting is the openness of the composition. Diebenkorn leaves areas unresolved, allowing the eye to complete the image. The tentative quality of the marks gives the work a feeling of immediacy. It’s like catching a glimpse into the artist’s thought process, you know? And this connects to the intimacy of his paintings, where he also lets the underpainting breathe through. It feels like such an open-ended conversation.