The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 24, 2025

Berkeley #42

1955

Richard Diebenkorn

(American, 1922–1993)
America
oil on canvas
Framed: 147.6 x 132.7 x 4.6 cm (58 1/8 x 52 1/4 x 1 13/16 in.); Unframed: 146 x 130.8 cm (57 1/2 x 51 1/2 in.)
Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art 1968.95
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The original owner of this painting sold it to the museum because she felt it was too large to comfortably hang in the Frank Lloyd Wright house she had just purchased.

Description

The hilly coastal landscape of Berkeley, California, informed a series of paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, who assigned numbers as titles to most of them. Despite this source, the artist emphasized the abstract qualities of these works, insisting in his notebook, "I am not a landscape painter."
  • The artist; [Poindexter Gallery, NY, 1958]; Ellen Johnson, Oberlin, OH, purchased in 1958; The Cleveland Museum of Art, purchased from Ellen Johnson in 1968.
  • "Year in Review for 1968," Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art LVI (January 1969), p. 48, no. 110, repr. . p. 29, 48
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 252 archive.org
    Hinson, Tom E. "Recent Paintings by Richard Diebenkorn and Jack Tworkov." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 2 (1980): 31-40. Reproduced: p. 32; Mentioned: p. 31-40 www.jstor.org
    Livingston, Jane and Andrea Liguori. Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Reproduced: p. 579, #1478
    Shields, Scott A., Matt Gonzalez, Paul Wonner, and William Theo Brown. Breaking the Rules: Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown. New York, NY : Scala Arts Publishers ; Sacramento, CA : Crocker Art Museum, 2023. Reproduced: p. 30
  • Contemporary Art and Textiles Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 13-August 26, 1984).
    CMA: The Figure: de Kooning to Warhol, no cat., listed #2 in handout.
    Works from the Contemporary Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 1-October 15, 1969).
    Year in Review for 1968. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 29-March 9, 1969).
    Poindexter Gallery: Richard Diebenkorn: February 1956-March 1956
  • {{cite web|title=Berkeley #42|url=false|author=Richard Diebenkorn|year=1955|access-date=24 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1968.95