Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in San Francisco. He attended Stanford University, and later the California School of Fine Arts – now known as the San Francisco Art Institute – where he taught until 1950. He is known primarily for his abstract landscape paintings, which were highly colorful and layered, and he eventually became a leading artist among the Bay Area Figurative art scene. His work often depicts the outside world from a nonliteral viewpoint, and in 1966 he also began to explore the style of geometric abstraction after moving to Santa Monica. Diebenkorn also painted portraits which enigmatically combined figurative and abstract styles.