RICHARD DIEBENKORN (1922-1993)










Provenance
M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1979Lawrence and Marina Rubin, Milan, 1979
M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1985
John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, 1985
Diane Disney Miller & Ron W. Miller Private collection, 1986
John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Private Collection, acquired from the above, 1986
Christie’s, November 13, 2019, Lot 27B
Private Collection, acquired from the above
Exhibition
New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Richard Diebenkorn, May 1979, p. 6-7 (illustrated in color)New York, CDS...More... Gallery, Artists Choose Artists, April-June 1982, p. 6 (illustrated)
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery; Madrid, Fundación Juan March; Frankfurt am Main, Franfurter Kunstverein; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Richard Diebenkorn, October 1991-January 1993, n.p., no. 48 (illustrated in color)
San Francisco, John Berggruen Gallery, Richard Diebenkorn: Selected Works from 1949-1991, March-April 1996
Literature
Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Drawings, 1943-1980, exh. cat., Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1980, p. 113, no. 67C. Andrews, “Vision City,” TWA Ambassador, July 1981, p. 45
Edward Lucie-Smith, American Art Now, New York, 1985, p. 18, fig. 14
John Berggruen, ed., John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, 1986, p. 28. (illustrated in color)
Julián Gállego, “La madurez de Richard Diebenkorn,” ABC de las artes, 10 January 1992, p. 24, (illustrated)
Jane Livingston and Andrea Liguori, eds., Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné, Volume Four, Catalogue Entries 3762-5197, New Haven and London, 2016, p. 260, no. 4341 (illustrated in color)
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IMPORTANT FACTS
- Ocean Park #108 showcases the spirit of Diebenkorn’s remarkable ability to translate the visual world into a meditative abstraction laden with intellectual rigor and personal resonance.
- In the context of American abstraction, Ocean Park #108 is a masterpiece of subtlety and nuance. Its interplay of horizon and sky geometry recalls earlier the desert roads Diebenkorn once photographed from an airplane, while its luminous palette evokes the marine light of the Pacific.
- Part of his acclaimed series, which spanned over two decades and comprises 125 oil paintings on canvas, this example captures the essence of Diebenkorn’s artistic philosophy: a fusion of restraint and spontaneity, where light, geometry, and color converge in perfect equipoise.
- Of Diebenkorn’s 125 Ocean Park paintings, 40 are held in museums including SFMoMA and The Met, 4 belong to the Diebenkorn estate, and the whereabouts of 1 is unknown, leaving only 80 paintings in private hands today.
HISTORY
Diebenkorn’s path to the Ocean Park series was as layered and nuanced as his canvases. Born in Portland, Oregon in 1922, he found his artistic footing in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he absorbed the Abstract Expressionism of figures like Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning. Yet even in his early abstractions, such as those inspired by the aerial views of the Southwestern landscape during flights to New Mexico, Diebenkorn’s work displayed a grounding in the tangible world. His shift to figuration in the mid-1950s, influenced by Bay Area peers like David Park and Elmer Bischoff, was met with surprise but underscored his belief in continuity rather than rupture. “I was never throwing things away,” he reflected. This ethos carried him back to abstraction in 1967 when the Ocean Park series began—a natural and revelatory return.
Ocean Park #108 (1978) showcases the spirit of Diebenkorn’s remarkable ability to translate the visual world into a meditative abstraction laden with intellectual rigor and personal resonance. Part of his acclaimed Ocean Park series, which spanned over two decades and more than 125 works, this painting captures the essence of Diebenkorn’s artistic philosophy: a fusion of restraint and spontaneity, where light, geometry, and color converge in perfect equipoise. Birthed in his Santa Monica studio overlooking this coastal neighborhood, the vantage point—framed by urban grids, oceanic expanses, and the shimmering Southern California light—shaped the language of these paintings. Yet Ocean Park #108, like its siblings, transcends a specific locality; it is less a depiction of a specific place and more a dialogue with the landscape of memory, perception, and art history.
In this work, the coral-hued arch hovers above turquoise, ochre, and alabaster bands, evoking the interplay of horizon and sky. Below, an expansive blue-gray plane is bisected by a diagonal line, lending the composition a quiet dynamism. This scaffold of lines and planes—Diebenkorn’s signature vocabulary—draws on his early admiration for Cezanne’s structured landscapes and Mondrian’s architectonic grids but with a distinct California sensibility. The work’s veiled layers and pentimenti reveal the artist’s process: a cycle of addition and erasure, as though the painting itself is a record of thought in motion. “Indecision, conflict, and tinkering” were, as Diebenkorn once noted, essential to his practice, and here, they coalesce into a harmony that feels earned rather than imposed.
What distinguishes Ocean Park #108 within this celebrated series is its quiet confidence, a quality Diebenkorn achieved through rigorous exploration rather than easy fluency. While influenced by Matisse—whose luminous color and spatial tension left an indelible mark on his work—Diebenkorn resisted prettiness, instead striving for what he called “tension beneath calm.” In Ocean Park #108, this tension is palpable in the interplay between the precision of its linear framework and the softness of its painted surface. The visible corrections and reworkings imbue the painting with a human quality, a sense that it is not merely an object but an ongoing conversation.
In the context of American abstraction, Ocean Park #108 is a masterpiece of subtlety and nuance. Its interplay of horizon and sky geometry recalls earlier the desert roads Diebenkorn once photographed from an airplane, while its luminous palette evokes the marine light of the Pacific. But the painting’s emotional resonance—its “breadth of reference,” as one critic noted—elevates it. To stand before Ocean Park #108 is to be enveloped in a space that feels both constructed and organic, abstract and deeply familiar. It is a testament to Diebenkorn’s lifelong inquiry into what painting could be: not a conclusion, but a possibility, ever unfolding.
TOP RESULTS AT AUCTION

"Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad" (1965) sold for $46,410,000 USD.

"Ocean Park #40" (1971) sold for $27,265,500 USD.

"Ocean Park #126" (1984) sold for $23,937,500 USD.

"Ocean Park #137" (1985) sold for $22,587,500 USD.
SIMILAR PAINTINGS IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
AUTHENTICATION
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