Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Henri Matisse French, 1869–1954 Sarah Stein 1916 Oil on canvas San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Sarah and Michael Stein Memorial Collection, gift of Elise S. Haas Diebenkorn saw this portrait and many more paintings by Matisse at Sarah Stein’s Palo Alto home in 1943. Stein, a native San Franciscan, had moved to Paris with her husband, Michael, and their young son in 1904. They began to acquire Matisse’s work the following year and quickly became his most passionate early supporters, as well as close personal friends. When they returned from France to the Bay Area in 1935—the year this museum was founded—they brought their substantial collection of modern art with them. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Urbana #4 1953 Oil on canvas Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, gift of Julianne Kemper Gilliam After taking a teaching position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Diebenkorn began to use color more expressively than ever before. In part, the palettes he explored in works such as Urbana #4 may have been reactions against the gray light of his new home. But they were also clearly inspired by his growing experience of Matisse’s paintings and his developing sense of how to apply what he saw in them to his own canvases. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Henri Matisse French, 1869–1954 Studio, Quai Saint-Michel 1916 Oil on canvas The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Diebenkorn first saw this work at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., in 1944. With its somber palette, focus on geometry, and evidence of process, the painting was of foundational importance to the young artist, who once called it “the big one for me.” His own Urbana #4, at left, echoes Studio, Quai Saint-Michel in color and composi- tion. When Diebenkorn shifted to a representational style in 1955, he would also pick up its subject of a model in the studio and its treatment of the relationship between inte- rior and exterior. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Urbana #6 1953 Oil on canvas Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund Though abstract in its overall approach, Urbana #6 is also reminiscent of Matisse’s interiors from Paris and Nice. The pale blue rectangle in the upper right may suggest a window, while the red accents evoke the goldfish in the French artist’s Goldfish and Palette, at right. Goldfish and Palette was featured prominently in Matisse’s 1952 retrospective in Los Angeles, and it clearly resonated with Diebenkorn. The bold canvas’s pared- down structure contains elements of both abstraction and representation, and it freely shows the art making process, as changes to color and form remain evident beneath the top layer of paint. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Urbana #5 (Beach Town) 1953 Oil on canvas Collection of Joann K. Phillips Though painted far from an actual beach, Urbana #5 (Beach Town) shares a seaside theme and sense of light with some of Matisse’s canvases from the South of France. Diebenkorn once recalled, “Here I was in the Midwest, and I was pretty unhappy there because of all this ground and hay and stuff around, and then this painting occurred. I don’t know, a suggestion of a street and buildings and perhaps an ocean on the other side of these things kept coming, insisting. I thought, well, this is what I want to paint, so I’m going to paint it.” Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Henri Matisse French, 1869–1954 Landscape: Broom 1906 Oil on panel San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, bequest of Elise S. Haas Sarah Stein and her husband, Michael, were the original owners of this small but powerful painting. Made in Collioure, a town in the South of France, it displays the energetic brushwork and vibrant palette characteristic of Matisse’s Fauve style. Diebenkorn would have first seen Landscape: Broom during his visit to Sarah Stein’s Palo Alto home in 1943. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Berkeley #22 1954 Oil on canvas Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Regents Collections Acquisition Program Berkeley #22 exemplifies the rigorous, thickly executed abstractions Diebenkorn produced in the Bay Area after his return from Illinois. With its mostly blue palette, var- iously shaped patches, and strong horizontal bands, the painting brings Berkeley’s unique quality of light and topography to mind. Yet it also employs a structure and colors seen in a number of Matisse’s landscapes; the stretch of blue at the top of the canvas recalls the high horizon line and sky in the French artist’s Landscape: Broom, on view nearby. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Berkeley #47 1955 Oil on canvas The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The unusual color scheme and broad bands of paint seen in this abstraction speak directly to Matisse’s Yellow Pottery from Provence, at right, with the com- position seemingly rotated 90 degrees. Diebenkorn would have seen that still life in the summer of 1947, when he visited an exhibition of thirty-one works from the collection of sisters Claribel and Etta Cone at The Baltimore Museum of Art. He later included this trip in a list of his most important encounters with Matisse’s work. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Berkeley #58 1955 Oil on canvas Private collection The decorative elements in this painting are unusual for the Berkeley series. Diebenkorn filled several blocks of color with polka dots, much like those seen in Matisse’s The Conversation, on display nearby, and even added a black heart. At the upper left, a Matisse-like rectangle of blue appears where one might expect to find a window in an interior with a view. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Henri Matisse French, 1869–1954 Seated Odalisque, Left Knee Bent, Ornamental Background and Checkerboard 1928 Oil on canvas The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland Throughout Matisse’s odalisque paintings, ornamental motifs are the dominant visual features. Dense decora- tion on walls and floors and on fabric coverings of chairs and beds nearly subsumes the figure in examples such as this. One of Matisse’s most opulent and pattern-rich canvases from the 1920s, this work offers a precedent for building a composition through interlocking shapes, a strategy Diebenkorn used in several of the Berkeley abstractions on view nearby. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Chabot Valley 1955 Oil on canvas Collection of Christopher Diebenkorn To create this work—one of the first Diebenkorn made in his new representational mode—the artist got into his car and drove around, looking for something to paint. Abstract Expressionism had become, in his words, a “stylistic straightjacket.” Just as Matisse took his paint box outdoors to work en plein air on Corsican Landscape, at right, Diebenkorn produced Chabot Valley outside. The landscape meant a lot to him, as he kept it close at hand in his various studios and elaborated on the com- position’s basic structure in a number of later works. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Richard Diebenkorn American, 1922–1993 Still Life with Orange Peel 1955 Oil on canvas San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, bequest of Barbara E. Foster Much like Matisse, who incorporated patterns into still-life compositions such as Lemons on a Pewter Plate, at right, Diebenkorn enlivened this tabletop arrangement with a boldly striped cloth—a portion of one of his child- hood bedspreads. The aqua green of the fabric offsets the vibrant hue of the orange peel and the more muted colors of the other items from his studio, including, per- haps surprisingly, a rotten lemon. Extended Label @ 80% of VEL size 9 inches wide 150 words 21/26 pt SFMOMA Matisse/Diebenkorn (Drawings Gallery, Large Extended label, 12 x 9 in) Henri Matisse French, 1869–1954 Still Life with Blue Jug ca.