RICHARD DIEBENKORN Folsom Street Variation III (Primaries).
Color aquatint and drypoint on Rives BFK, 1986. 305x660 mm; 12x26 inches, full margins. Initialed, dated and numbered 57/60 in pencil, lower margin. Published by Crown Point Press, San Francisco, with the blind stamp lower right. A superb, richly-inked impression with strong colors.
Diebenkorn (1922-1993) adopted Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s/early 1950s, influenced by Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997, see lots 9-12) and Clyfford Still (1904-1980). In the 1960s, Diebenkorn began to blend Abstract Expressionism with figural and color motifs gleaned from an acute appreciation of the work of Henri Matisse (1869-1954). In doing so, he developed his own distinct abstract style, more geometric and less gestural than his earlier work, which is most readily apparent in the seminal Ocean Park painting series that he began in 1967 and developed over the next 25 years. Similar to this series of paintings is the group of color aquatints, Folsom Street Variations, that Diebenkorn made in 1986.
