Abstracting the Land: Richard Diebenkorn and Bay Area Artists Today

Abstracting the Land brings together early works by Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993) with work by a group of living, early-career Bay Area artists, all exploring landscape through abstraction. Working 70 years apart, these artists share an interest in the space between representation and abstraction, specifically in how to translate the experience of place into visual art. Rather than suggesting a direct influence or artistic lineage, the exhibition considers how contemporary artists depart from, and build upon, the Bay Area’s landscape tradition.

Diebenkorn’s engagement with the environment is evident in his early works on paper: in the physical surroundings in which he lived and worked, and in the artistic milieu of the post-World War II art scene with which he was involved. The contemporary artists represented in the exhibition, meanwhile, have inherited very different territory, transformed by urban development, climate change, drought and wildfire, as well as by the shifting patterns of migration and displacement.

In Abstracting the Land Bay Area–based artists respond to a question that persists across generations: “What can it mean to look closely at a landscape?” Diebenkorn and today’s artists share a bold spirit of experimentation and reinvention, while reflecting the distinct times and circumstances that influence their work.