32 Facts About Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn was an American painter and printmaker.

Richard Diebenkorn's family moved to San Francisco, California, when he was two years old.

In 1940, Richard Diebenkorn entered Stanford University, where he met his first two artistic mentors, professor and muralist Victor Arnautoff, who guided Richard Diebenkorn in classical formal discipline with oil paint, and Daniel Mendelowitz, with whom he shared a passion for the work of Edward Hopper.

Also at Stanford, Richard Diebenkorn met his fellow student and future wife, Phyllis Antoinette Gilman.

Richard Diebenkorn entered the United States Marine Corps in 1943, where he served until 1945.

In 1945, Richard Diebenkorn was scheduled to deploy to Japan; however, with the war's end in August 1945, he was discharged and returned to life in the Bay Area.

Richard Diebenkorn developed his own style of abstract expressionist painting.

In 1946, Richard Diebenkorn enrolled as a student in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, which was developing its own vigorous style of abstract expressionism.

In 1947, after ten months in Woodstock on an Alfred Bender travel grant, Richard Diebenkorn returned to the CSFA, where he adopted abstract expressionism as his vehicle for self-expression.

Richard Diebenkorn was offered a place on the CSFA faculty in 1947 and taught there until 1950.

Richard Diebenkorn was influenced at first by Clyfford Still, who taught at the CSFA from 1946 to 1950, Arshile Gorky, Hassel Smith, and Willem de Kooning.

Richard Diebenkorn became a leading abstract expressionist on the West Coast.

In September 1953, Richard Diebenkorn moved to back to the San Francisco Bay Area from New York City, where he had spent the summer.

Richard Diebenkorn took a position at California College of Arts and Crafts in 1955, teaching until 1958.

Richard Diebenkorn established his home in Berkeley and lived there until 1966.

Richard Diebenkorn began to have a measure of success with his artwork during this period.

Richard Diebenkorn was included in several group shows and had several solo exhibits.

Also while in Southern California, Richard Diebenkorn was a guest at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, where he worked on a suite of prints completed in 1962.

Also in the fall of 1961, Richard Diebenkorn became a faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught periodically until 1966.

Richard Diebenkorn taught intermittently during these years at a number of other colleges, including the California College of Arts and Crafts and Mills College in Oakland, the University of Southern California, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

In September 1963, Richard Diebenkorn was named the first artist-in-residence at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, an appointment that lasted until June 1964.

From fall 1964 to spring 1965, Richard Diebenkorn traveled through Europe, and he was granted a cultural visa to visit important Soviet museums and view their holdings of Matisse's paintings.

Livingston said about the January 1966 Matisse exhibition that Richard Diebenkorn saw in Los Angeles,.

In September 1966, Richard Diebenkorn moved to Santa Monica, California, and took up a professorship at UCLA.

Richard Diebenkorn moved into a small studio space in the same building as his old friend from the Bay Area, Sam Francis.

In 1986, Richard Diebenkorn decided to leave Santa Monica and Southern California.

In 1990, Diebenkorn produced a series of six etchings for the Arion Press edition of Poems of W B Yeats, with poems selected and introduced by Helen Vendler.

Richard Diebenkorn died due to complications from emphysema in Berkeley on March 30,1993.

Richard Diebenkorn had his first show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco 1948.

In 1978, Richard Diebenkorn was awarded The Edward MacDowell Medal by The MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture.

In 1991, Richard Diebenkorn was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Author William Benton made a painting in the style of Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park for a friend who was a big admirer of the artist's work.