Works available | ‹ PREVIOUS | NEXT ›
#9 from Nine Etchings and Drypoints 1977
| Medium: | Hardground etching on German Etching paper | |
| Sheet size: | 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.8 cm), with full margins | |
| Image size: | 13 1/2 x 10 in (34.3 x 25.4 cm) | |
| Printer: | John Slivon | |
| Publisher: | Crown Point Press, San Francisco | |
| Edition: | 25 plus proofs | |
| Edition Number: | 5/25 | |
| Signed: | lower right "RD 77" |
$12,000
Cigar Box Lid #3 1976
Oil on wood
Petroglyph
Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, New Mexico
The lines of Diebenkorn's etching explore the bones of his famed Ocean Park works. Of strong resemblance to the etching is one of his wonderful cigar box paintings, Cigar Box Lid #3, from a year earlier. We discovered the existence of these dozen unknown paintings that he made on salvaged cigar box lids at the home of his daughter, and we were the first to publish a book on them.
The etching distills his thoughts to entopic parallel lines, mesmerizing to humans since prehistory, producing altered states of consciousness. Linear structures can be graphemes, the barest expression of visual ideas, exemplified in a petroglyph from Three Rivers, New Mexico. Diebenkorn spent his
graduate years in New Mexico and connected with the prehistoric rock drawings there.
Glyphs permeate his drawings.