Now into its final month, Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966 concludes its critically-acclaimed run at the de Young Museum on 29 September. The exhibition focuses on the transformative years the painter spent in Northern California, when he abandoned Abstract Expressionism in favour of an increasingly representational approach. Whilst heralding what became known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Diebenkorn’s experimentation was divisive due to the political significance attached to American abstract painting at the time.

In 1965 Diebenkorn’s interest took him where few westerners had been before him when he travelled to the USSR. The artist and his wife visited Moscow and Leningrad in order to view paintings by Matisse, which had suffered a tempestuous fate since falling into the hands of the Soviet authorities. Upon his return to the United States Diebenkorn commemorated his visit in the painting Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad.

In case you can’t make it to San Francisco in time, the exhibition transfers to the Palm Springs Art Museum from 26 October 2013.

Image: Richard Diebenkorn, Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, 1965. Courtesy The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation