Girl Squatting

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Diebenkorn here combines reverie and geometry to evoke a psychological mood. He creates compositions in which shapes and colors relate to each other independent of the subject matter and then allows physical and emotional overtones to unfold through the introduction of a figure. Diebenkorn feels that “a figure exerts a continuing and unpredictable influence on a painting as the canvas develops.” Here he has placed a girl so that her body cuts across the horizontal planes of color. Because her face is turned away from us, her mood remains ambiguous.

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