Oral history interview with Richard Diebenkorn, 1985 May 1-1987 December 15, Transcript
Oral history interview with Richard Diebenkorn, 1985 May 1-1987 December 15, Digital Sound Recording (Excerpt)
Originally recorded on 10 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 16 digital wav files. Duration is 7 hr., 43 min.
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
An interview of Richard Diebenkorn conducted 1985 May 1-1987 December 15, by Susan Larsen, for the Archives of American Art.
Diebenkorn speaks of his family background and early life; his education and his service in the Marine Corps; his introduction to modernism; his early abstract work; the formation of the Bay Area figurative school and the relationship between art in New York and in the Bay Area; teaching; critical and public reaction to his work; important exhibitions of his work; vacillating between the figurative and the abstract in his painting; his working methods. He recalls Daniel Mendelowitz, Erle Loran, Raymond Jonson, David Park, and Elmer Bischoff.
Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was a painter from California.
These interviews are part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others. [Another interview of Diebenkorn was donated by Larsen, 1977].