Gagosian has announced representation of the late American painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), marking the artist's return to the gallery more than thirty years after his final solo exhibition there during his lifetime. To celebrate, the gallery will mount a career-spanning exhibition at its Madison Avenue flagship opening November 8, curated by Jasper Sharp in collaboration with the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. The show will feature works from every period of Diebenkorn's six-decade career, including early California landscapes, wartime watercolors, and the celebrated Ocean Park abstractions, with highlights such as a 1943 watercolor, a monumental 1960 canvas, and late works on paper.
The announcement comes amid mixed auction results for Diebenkorn: in 2023, "Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad" (1965) sold for $46.4 million at Christie's New York, but two Ocean Park paintings failed to sell at Sotheby's last year despite estimates up to $25 million. The partnership between Gagosian and the Diebenkorn Foundation signals a fresh institutional effort to reaffirm the artist's relevance and market position, especially given that major museums like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Met, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and MoMA hold his work. The move suggests Larry Gagosian may be betting on a resurgence in demand for Diebenkorn's work.