Woman on Porch
Richard Diebenkorn
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Date:1958 -
Style:Expressionism -
Genre:genre painting -
Media:oil, canvas -
Location:New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), New Orleans, LA, US
Woman on Porch
Richard Diebenkorn
Diebenkorn's shift from abstract landscape to a more figurative style that had begun in 1954 can be seen in this painting. The artist maintained that works such as this one had been partly influenced by his friends Elmer Bischoff and David Park, who had turned away from landscape toward the figure. Also, Diebenkorn had been looking at the work of such European modernists as Edgar Degas (in the solitary, pensive figure), Pierre Bonnard (in the sumptuous color), Henri Matisse (in fusing the three-dimensional figure with the essentially two-dimensional abstract background), and the German Expressionists (in the mask-like face and the freedom of the brushstroke). From their examples, he learned to paint the sole figure - newly imbued with a level of human psychology - embedded within the abstract surface design.
By Theartstory
