Guy Diehl, Forging an Art Life (Part Two)
A biography of minimalist still life artist Guy Diehl, concerning his early days in Pennsylvania and the development of his art career in California. Part Two covers the period after Diehl received his Master of Arts degree from San Francisco State in 1976 to the present.
by Matt Gonzalez
After obtaining an M.A. from San Francisco State in 1976, Guy Diehl knew success as an artist might not come quickly, but he wasn’t prepared for it to be as challenging as it was. The preceding nine years, between when Diehl started school at Diablo Valley College (DVC) and graduated from SF State, would be followed by an equal number of years before he found a gallery that supported his developing style and understood his place in the lineage of California painting. Although Diehl never lacked gallery representation after leaving graduate school, he credits his relationship with the Jeremy Stone Gallery, which began in late 1984, as being critical to his success as a painter.
After the Stone gallery closed in 1991, Diehl exhibited with various fine galleries, including Modernism and Hackett-Freedman Gallery in San Francisco, before he started working with Dolby Chadwick Gallery in 2010, where he still exhibits today. Lisa Dolby Chadwick had started her gallery thirteen years earlier and emerged as one of San Francisco’s premier galleries by the time they started their collaboration.
In the decade following his graduation, Diehl moved away from Photorealism. His pool series, within that genre, had started with figurative elements, such as bathers gathered by the pool, dominating the compositions. Eventually the emphasis shifted to only depicting still life objects; those commonly seen at the pool or beach, such as sunglasses, visors, and beach towels. Diehl staged these compositions, but he did so in outdoor lighting which was relatively fleeting. Diehl would capture the scene with photography, but he wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to reexamine the live arrangement of objects at his leisure, since these scenes were happening on location in public areas.
The subsequent paintings, what Diehl refers to as his still life series, are the paintings that follow the pool series, and which exclusively focus on object placement (of items with personal or art historical significance) in a staged indoor setting with arranged lighting. These constructions, as Diehl sometimes calls them, allows for closer observational study, since Diehl isn’t strictly working from a source photo image or his memory. The studio setting allows Diehl to return and closely observe the carefully arranged objects as many times as he wishes, something he couldn’t do with the pool paintings.
Despite the opportunity to view the still life repeatedly and glean as much detail as he wants from it, Diehl is often interested in stripping away the exact details he can see with the naked eye and in the source photographs, to achieve a more nuanced, even minimalist, viewing experience. If there is irony here, it is that the opportunity for greater focus has corresponded with his interest in rendering less. He continues to be attentive to color relationships that emerge and the dialogue between those color fields and object angles, and particularly the transitions between the things he is rendering. But the primary influence shifted to emphasize the manner in which light affects color, and how manipulating studio lights, allows the composition to be more compelling.
Diehl uses the same tools and methods as he transitioned into the still life series, particularly the use of source photos. Importantly, he continues to sometimes supplement what the reference photographs showed him, relying on his memory, his ability to create color variations with acrylic, and the human eye’s superior vision; all with the visual experience he seeks to create for the viewer in mind. Diehl also utilizes exposure bracketing, which is the process of examining both under and over exposures of the same staged photograph to reveal elusive visual cues in the still life.
After graduating from San Francisco State, Diehl had to confront the challenges of making a living as an artist. Diehl moved back home with his parents to ease the financial hardships he faced. A room in the 4-bedroom Eichler home was already dedicated as a studio, which Diehl had used during his high school years. The first year was the hardest. Although living with his parents made economic sense, it still represented something of a defeat. His parents had been skeptical that an art career made sense and living with them after years of schooling served as proof of that. They did, however, cling to the hope that teaching art might be a way Diehl could support himself. Looking back, Diehl recalls the anxiety he experienced wondering whether the path he had embarked on years earlier would ever turn into success.
During those years, Diehl did, in fact, have a number of promising opportunities. With hindsight, it is clear Diehl’s artistic success was starting to manifest, though his struggles resembled those faced by artists of his generation. Fortunately, friends he had made during his school days reappeared in the ensuing years, offering opportunities for work as an artist.
Las Medanos College Exhibition — 1976
Christie Marchi, who had studied with Diehl at Diablo Valley College arranged for his first one-person show, post-graduation, in 1976. She had attended graduate school at Sacramento State and was now trying to balance her own art career with teaching. She served as a curator of exhibitions, as part of a gallery management class she was teaching, at a new community college in Contra Costa County, in Pittsburg, CA. Las Medanos College art exhibition space was above the administrative offices, and Diehl was invited to have a solo exhibition of his paintings.
Marchi taught at the college, and Diehl had remained in contact with her via mutual friends. Like Diehl, Marchi was connected with Allan Kikuchi and with Diehl’s friend Kirk Henderson who lived in Marchi’s mother’s home, which was routinely rented to students attending DVC. Marchi would later teach at DVC and marry Diehl’s DVC art instructor Ed Higgins.
Three separate press stories promoted and discussed the Las Medanos exhibition; each reproducing images and including photographs of Diehl. “Poolside on canvas” by a staff writer in the Post-Dispatch, December 2, 1976; “One man art show on campus” by Bill Holt in The Experience, the Las Medanos College campus newspaper, December 3, 1976; and “Exploring life at a pool” by Carol Barcklay in the Pittsburg Press, December 10, 1976.
The Post-Dispatch article noted that “Diehl’s subjects include the swimsuit-clad residents of modern apartment complexes in the Concord-Walnut Creek areas, often clustered around their swimming pools.”
Holt’s article in The Experience explained the new art style Diehl worked in “Photo realism is a style of painting in which the art work appears to be a photograph. Diehl’s paintings, many of them done in acrylics, deal with people taking it easy at poolside.” The article quoted Las Medanos art instructor Marchi: “Photorealism is a nation wide art form, but it has very strong representation here in the Bay Area.”
Barcklay’s article in the Pittsburg Press quotes Diehl talking about how the photograph can “only provides so much information” which he tries to strengthen “by creating an illusion of life with even greater detail.” Diehl explains that “the subtleties of color and mood can be explored far more broadly in a painting than in a color print. Also mood tones can be more fully expressed using acrylic paint or watercolor.”
California’s statewide ballot initiative, Prop. 13, passed in 1978 greatly reduced the tax revenue the state collected and made available for full-time public instruction. As a result, teaching jobs were hard to come by. Nevertheless, Diehl pursued a state teaching credential authorizing him to teach in a college level curriculum. His M.A. degree assured his approval. Thereafter, Diehl became a substitute, part-time, teacher at Diablo Valley College, as well as Las Medanos. Later he would also work at Las Positas College in Livermore, a satellite campus to Chabot College, in Oakland. Being a substitute instructor meant that Diehl would fill-in for instructors on sabbatical leave or otherwise unable to instruct their classes. At first, he resented not being able to get a full-time teaching job, but with time, Diehl realized how lucky he was to not have to devote his energies to full-time academic responsibilities allowing him more time in the studio, making his own work.
Walton Gilbert Gallery
Diehl’s first gallery was the Walton Gilbert Gallery, a storefront located on the 500 block of Sutter Street. The gallery director, Walter Maibaum, knew of Diehl’s work because Maibaum’s partner at the time, Suzie Lock, also attended SF State. She was now working as an art consultant and Diehl and Maibaum met through social circles around the San Francisco art scene. Maibaum was a Bauhaus enthusiast with interest in the German design of the pre-WWII art movement. It is likely that Diehl’s precision, and interest in form, caught his attention. Although Diehl did not have any exhibitions at the gallery, Maibaum arranged to take work on consignment, to test collector’s interest in Diehl’s work.
At the time Diehl was making canvas paintings, and still working in the style of Photorealism; although he had begun to eliminate the figure, leaving only the objects bathers typically bring with them to the pool or beach. Diehl would work with the gallery for a single year. Maibaum, himself, acquired Diehl’s painting of “Alice” (1974) depicting the subject reclining, in a Modigliani-like pose, on a patio lounge chair, in a white bathing suit and broad brimmed hat.
Editions Press
In 1977 to 1978, Diehl took a job at the fine arts press Editions Press as a colorist. They occupied a two-story red brick building on Minna Street, near 7th Street. The offices, curation, and print storage operations were upstairs, while the hand lithography and etching departments were on the ground floor. Walter Maibaum of the Walton Gilbert Gallery was the director, making it likely Diehl was encouraged to seek employment there. Master Printer Ernesto DeSoto was transitioning into retirement; Lloyd Baggs and Richard Newlan were the Master Printers during Diehl’s employment.
Diehl’s work at the press entailed drawing on limestone by hand, utilizing a lithography process which would allow the original artist to generate multiples. Although Diehl was the artist drawing on the stone and aluminum plates, he remained anonymous, preparing prints for the source artist to sign as their own.
Diehl recalls making a lithographic edition print, depicting a Japanese woman holding an orchid, for artist Margaret Keane who was experiencing wide popularity at the time. Her distinctive big-eyed subjects, primarily children, became a signature hallmark of her work. Diehl drew an image of a young girl holding a flower based on a painting by Keane. The stone was processed with gum arabic and acid, then moistened and inked by hand using a leather roller. The inky image was directly transferred to paper one at a time under a scraper bar’s pressure of the press. Margaret Keane signed the numbered edition of 300.
Another job entailed making lithography prints from a photograph to commemorate a businessman’s retirement. The photo was a three-quarter professional studio photograph Diehl rendered onto the stone. Printers processed the stone and printed (pulled) the edition. The finished prints were distributed to the retirement dinner attendees.
During his work at Editions Press, Diehl met Donald Farnsworth who was one of ten assistant printers. Farnsworth would later open the fine art print studio, Magnolia Editions in Oakland, where Diehl would work and collaborate with Farnsworth on various projects beginning in 1987. At the time they worked at Editions Press, Farnsworth was putting in his time (six years) to become Editions Press’ master printer, a designation which he achieved in 1979, shortly after Diehl left Editions Press.
Hank Baum Gallery
By 1978, Diehl was working with Hank Baum, who showcased exhibitions with Diehl in 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1984. The Hank Baum Gallery was at Three Embarcadero Center in the Financial District of San Francisco. Joy Broom and David King, both art instructors at DVC for whom Diehl substituted, also exhibited with the gallery.
Sometime in 1978, at Baum’s urging, Diehl began working almost exclusively with watercolor. Still composing within his pool series, Baum encouraged the shift because he was having success selling the work. Both Diehl’s talent in the medium and the lower price point, were attractive to collectors who gravitated to the work. Moreover, Diehl could complete a watercolor in a week to ten days as opposed to the many weeks a canvas painting would take.
During these years from 1978 to 1984, Diehl completed nearly 100 watercolors. In addition to six of Diehl’s acrylic paintings, Baum sold twenty-seven watercolors during the time they worked together.
Despite the shortened time it took Diehl to complete a watercolor, it was a challenging medium. Diehl describes it as “premeditative,” meaning you have to carefully consider the physics involved and manage the characteristics of the various elements. Diehl typically used thicker paper, an Arches 300 lb cold press paper which could handle water well and not lose its dimensional stability. Each pigment had its own characteristics: some were transparent, opaque, or sedimentary. The specific gravity of each pigment affected compositional choices too: some mingled with each other, some would separate and, others would settle into the lower areas of the paper’s texture, causing a reticulation effect, making the dropping of color into the composition something of an alchemy. Importantly, there are few ways to erase what you’ve done, so success is dependent on predictive color mixing and knowing how distributing that color would advance the look of the painting. One thing Diehl learned from his instructors was valuable advice: student grade materials, while inexpensive, were not going to lend themselves to the best results.
Looking through Diehl’s curriculum vitae, it’s apparent that other opportunities coalesced for Diehl, many arranged by Baum. Diehl exhibited works on paper in 1979 at the University of Purdue, in Lafayette, Indiana. That same year he also showed one of his pool series figure paintings in a show at the Civic Arts Gallery in Walnut Creek in a show titled “Humanform.” A variety of exhibitions followed: in 1981 Diehl exhibited in a show “California Artists,” at the Spokane Falls Community College in Spokane, WA; in 1982 he was included in “Northern California Realist Painters,” at the Redding Museum, Redding, CA; and in 1984 Diehl was included in an Art Programs Inc. exhibition “Sun and Surf” which was shown in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In March 1979, art critic Thomas Albright reviewed Diehl’s exhibition at the Hank Baum Gallery, “A Photo-Realist Paradox” in the San Francisco Chronicle, writing: “Diehl’s forte is particularly intense, saturated color that suggests a brilliant, directly overhead sunlight, and peculiarly soft, sensuous surfaces. His watercolors are especially remarkable examples of the Photo Realist esthetic: crispy literal from a distance, the essence of well scrubbed freshness and transparency when viewed up close.” In November 1980, in a second San Francisco Chronicle review, Albright again singled out Diehl’s watercolor work, saying “His watercolors have a soft, veiled quality that mitigates the steely crispness of outlines and intensity of light; the paintings tend to harden and congeal.”
Colossal Pictures
From 1980 to 1981, Diehl worked as an artist at Colossal Pictures located at their studios on 9th & Mission streets. Diehl’s friend, and former DVC classmate, Kirk Henderson, who hired Diehl, worked as one of the art directors.
Diehl was hired for his drawing skills, which he employed as an animation colorist. His first job was working on a television advertisement project for Boise Cascade Paper Company. Diehl was assigned to a team of thirty other colorists, working either a day or night shift, six days a week. Each colorist would generate a drawing style to create images that served as separate sequential frames that would be reproduced on film to create animated movement.
The work involved colorizing Xerox copies of a live-action film, frame by frame, with Prismacolor pencils; thereby reproducing the designated image style initially created by Henderson. The process was labor intensive, generating hundreds of sequential frame drawings. Thereafter, the illustrations would be shot on 35mm color film, ultimately producing a thirty-second animated commercial.
Jeremy Stone Gallery
In late 1983, the young San Francisco gallerist Jeremy Stone bought a small square watercolor painting by Diehl from a fundraising auction. The watercolor depicted the edge of a pool and chrome railing going into water; it was 9x 9 inches in dimensions.
An artist friend of Diehl’s asked him “Do you know who bought your piece? Allan Stone’s daughter Jeremy, she has her own gallery here in San Francisco.” Diehl had no idea who she was although he was familiar with Allan Stone, who was a prominent art dealer in New York City. The Jeremy Stone Gallery, on the 100 block of Post Street (later on the first block of Grant Avenue), was in business from 1982 to 1991. Stone opened her eponymous gallery at the age of 24, after working with Price Amerson on various projects at UC Davis’ Richard L. Nelson Gallery, while on the staff of Anne Kohs & Associates in San Francisco. Diehl recalls her later telling him that she had been immersed in art growing up; she fondly recalled playing jacks as a child on her father’s gallery floor in New York City. It wasn’t surprising that she gravitated to a life in art.
Although Diehl appreciated Baum’s efforts on his behalf, after an unsuccessful show in 1984, Diehl felt Baum had exhausted his collector base. He had sold a third of the pool series watercolors that Diehl had made up to that point, but it occurred over the course of seven years and wasn’t sustainable, or growing, as evidenced by the final show they had together, where no sales resulted. Diehl recalls driving home from the gallery, in a borrowed truck loaded up with his unsold paintings and watercolors, and deciding it was time to make a move.
In late 1984, Diehl and Stone spoke about working together; she was 26 years old, Diehl was 36. Diehl and Baum made an amicable break, and Diehl started exhibiting with the Jeremy Stone Gallery in 1985. Stone also exhibited two artists who greatly influenced Diehl’s aesthetic, Richard McLean and Wayne Thiebaud.
During the transition to working with the Jeremy Stone Gallery, Diehl was profiled in a Livermore Herald article “Money no motive for this artist.” The article poignantly captures Diehl’s previous nine-year path since leaving graduate school noting “Diehl works six days a week at his painting, striving more for recognition in the art world than commercial success. Artistic acclaim is more elusive than he expected it to be, but he has no regrets about the choices he’s made.”
Within six months of working with Stone, Diehl had a number of encounters with Gordon Cook’s still life paintings that compelled him to depart from his Photorealism pool series and start applying more restraint, within the still life genre.
Gordon Cook was born in Chicago, IL, but had been in California since the 1950s working in intaglio printmaking. He later taught at the San Francisco Art Institute where he became associated with Bay Area Figurative artists Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and Joan Brown (whom he married in the late 1960s). In the early 1980s he would be part of a drawing circle that included Wayne Thiebaud, William Theophilus Brown, Beth Van Hoesen, and Mark Adams.
Cook’s paintings were muted in color and often focused on single still life subjects, such as a bottle or letter box. Small in size, he utilized impasto to convey only the essential details necessary to render realism. His quiet and minimalist paintings were often compared to those of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.
Diehl saw Gordon Cook’s work at a number of different venues. In close sequence, Diehl saw an exhibition of Cook’s “Recent Works,” at the Charles Campbell Gallery in 1984, then encountered Cook’s painting “One Lb. Garbanzos” (1975) at the Oakland Museum. Later, he again saw Cook’s work at Modesto Lanzone’s Ghirardelli Square restaurant. Lanzone was known for his artistic eye and had adorned his restaurant with contemporary art. For Diehl, these repeated run-ins with Cook’s paintings, compelled him to reevaluate his own work.
Jeremy Stone was representing Susan Hauptman at the time and upon seeing her charcoal still life work, Diehl was further moved to consider a restrained realism, in the still life genre, as a new focus. The encounters with Cook and Hauptman’s work caused Diehl to reflect on the limits of painting too much detail. Cook’s paintings spoke to him and Diehl wanted to start painting in a different language. Photorealism had run its course for him.
Diehl started primarily exploring the still life genre, first starting with life-size drawings and watercolors of various hand tools. He initially made about ten early graphite drawings and five watercolors, 11 x 14 inches, of various instruments such as lineman pliers, hammers, awl, screwdrivers, chisels, and vise-grips. He was experimenting with single object still lifes, just as Gordon Cook had done, including an apple, orange, single open dictionary, fetish pouch, and artist brush.
From these drawings, Diehl graduated to small format acrylic paintings. At the time, he worked with a single light source, and preferred the static light for control (as opposed to outdoor daylight used in the pool series). Eventually, he started incorporating art historical references by utilizing artist postcards as objects placed in the still life, including some by Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keefe. In one of these early paintings, Diehl even referenced the San Francisco Chronicle front page Sunday Comics in a painting.
In 1985, Diehl was included in his first Jeremy Stone Gallery exhibition which included four gallery artists; he first exhibited his tool drawings.
The following year, some of Diehl’s pool series paintings were shown in the atrium of a large commercial building that the Lurie Company owned on Market Street at 5th Street. Additionally, his first solo exhibition with the Jeremy Stone Gallery came in 1986 and included various paintings on canvas. He would go on to have two other solo shows at the gallery, in 1988 and 1990. By this point, Diehl’s production had increased. In 1985, Diehl completed 19 paintings. In 1986, he made 25. In 1987, Diehl finished 26 paintings. By contrast, some of Diehl’s photorealist pool series paintings took months to complete.
San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker reviewed Diehl’s show at the Jeremy Stone Gallery in 1986, saying “His work is much in the line of Bay Area artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Mark Adams. Like them, he lavishes attention on the halations that surround brightly lit objects and on painterly equivalents to details of shadow, reflection and surface texture.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1986.
Stone promoted Diehl and was able to place him in a number of other exhibitions: In 1986, Diehl exhibited at the Airport Cafe at the San Francisco International Airport; in 1987, he was included in a show “Seven Painters from the Jeremy Stone Gallery,” at Shasta College in Redding, CA; in 1987, he was included in the exhibition “Contemporary Realism,” at the Palo Alto Cultural Center, Palo Alto, CA; and in 1988, he was shown in “Still Life,” at the Airport Gallery, in San Francisco International Airport.
Susan Hinton, of Artweek, reviewed the Palo Alto Cultural Center which included work by ten artists: Wayne Thiebaud, Paul Wonner, Guy Diehl, Charles Griffin Farr, Mel Ramos, Mary Snowden, Joe Draegert, Steven Bigler, Richard Estes, and John Register. Writing about Diehl, Hinton notes “Within this exhibition, Guy Diehl’s work most deliberately comments on its relationship to photography. In each of his small paintings there is one narrow, sharp focal plane, and he rest of the picture gently blurs. A standard lens would cause the same effect in a close-up photograph. This mildly humorous commentary is heightened by Diehl’s centering the droll objects in his still lifes (as do many snapshots).” She adds “In Red Book with Picasso Card, we hover over two books in a three-quarter aerial view and espy the top portion of a Picasso postcard used as a bookmark. Thus art theorist Walter Benjamin’s observation on the faltering aura of unique artworks in an age of photographic reproduction is both acknowledged and reappropriated.” Artweek, January 23, 1988.
Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art
In 1987, Diehl exhibited with Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, originally located on the 800 block of N. La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles and later in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. The 1987 show “Recent Paintings” highlighted some of Diehl’s earliest paintings from his still life series.
He would also exhibit with the gallery in 2004. A review in the Los Angeles Times noted, “Diehl is terrifically adept at rendering volume, translucency and shadow, and his compositions are always elegant and harmonious.” The review emphasized that “Guy Diehl’s paintings are reverential, above all. A consummate technician steeped in art history, Diehl practices painting as an act of homage.” “Meticulous tribute to other artists,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2004.
In 1991, after nine years running a gallery, and after extensive renovations to the gallery to repair damage caused by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Jeremy Stone closed her gallery. She left an impressive legacy having curated over 80 exhibitions in the preceding years.
Stone started an art appraisal business, Business Matters in the Visual Arts, and worked as a Special Events Manager at the Jewish Contemporary Museum where she ran the Contemporaries group for young professionals (supporting the Art Spiegelman Road to Maus exhibition); and she served as a juror in one of the museum’s invitational exhibitions. She also worked for the LEAP Arts in Education nonprofit, which had been formed in 1979 in response to education budget cuts in California. For many years, Stone taught as visiting faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Importantly, Diehl left the Jeremy Stone Gallery feeling Stone had significantly advanced his career. During the period of transition, Stone worked hard to place her artists in other galleries.
Modernism
Stone thought Modernism gallery would be a good fit for Diehl’s work. At the time, Modernism was in the Beaux Arts Monadnock Building on Market Street, and Diehl had met Martin Muller at exhibitions of Mel Ramos’ work there. Muller arranged a meeting with Diehl in 1991 to discuss the possibility of working together. Both were eager to give it a try.
Muller, a native of Switzerland, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. His gallery, which he started in the following decade, exhibited West Coast artists such as Mel Ramos, John Register, and Mark Stock and he also curated exhibitions by early 20th Century Russian avant-garde artists, such as Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky; and also exhibits focused on artists from European movements such as Dada, Cubism, Vorticism, and German Expressionism. Muller featured individual artists such as Andy Warhol, Le Corbusier, Gottfried Helnwein, and Dada collagist Erwin Blumenfeld. Diehl credits Muller with introducing him to Russian constructivist painters which started to appear, as art-about-art references, in Diehl’s own work. Mueller didn’t hesitate to encourage Diehl to utilize particular art historical references he liked himself.
Muller started including some pool series paintings in group shows. Diehl’s solo exhibitions at Modernism occurred in 1993, 1994, and 1997.
Kenneth Baker reviewed Diehl’s 1993 Modernism exhibition noting “Despite their formalistic tidiness, Diehl’s pictures almost always show him thinking about more than structure.” He goes on further to say “Diehl has not exactly reinvented realism in his new work, but he does remind us that interactions of style and content may make depictive painting more adaptable to changing cultural frameworks than we suspect.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 23, 1993.
Diehl also started working with the Fletcher Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1994. Introduced to Jay Fletcher by fellow Modernism artist Mark Stock, the gallery was located on the 600 block of Canyon Road, in the heart of the Santa Fe art scene. Diehl participated in a group show in 1994, then a solo exhibition the following year.
Dottie Indyke reviewed Diehl’s solo exhibition at the Fletcher Gallery, writing “Whether the object of his attention is a fruit, vegetable, or article of clothing, California painter Guy Diehl makes it come to life in a new way. Set against a neutral background, Diehl’s subjects nearly glow, exhibiting the artist’s concern for what he calls ‘the seduction of light.’ His presentation is always distilled down to its most basic.” The article quotes Diehl at length about his approach to realism and his concern with light and color. Diehl reiterates a focus of his work saying “I ask myself how I can make a statement by doing less.” Dottie Indyke, “Less is more in Diehl’s seductions of light,” Pasatiempo (Santa Fe, New Mexico Weekly), July 7, 1995.
Kenneth Baker reviewed Diehl’s 1994 exhibition at Modernism which was presented in the gallery adjacent to a show of work by Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer, who had been part of the Fluxus-like “Actionist” group in Vienna in the 1960. Baker wrote “It is a relief to turn from the Rainers at Modernism to the concurrent show of small still lifes by San Francisco painter Guy Diehl. Diehl paints arrangements of books and art postcards in a velvety realist manner. His pictures balance tensions between the literal report of still-life objects, the quotation of other artists’ works and smoothly executed patterns of light, reflection and shadow.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 1994.
In 1997, Diehl made a decision to leave Modernism and look for new representation. Although the gallery was making sales, Diehl was looking for greater growth opportunities.
Hackett-Freedman Gallery
Diehl had been included in a group show with the Contemporary Realist Gallery while still represented by Modernism. At the time, the gallery was located on Grant Street. Business partners Tracy Freedman and Michael Hackett transitioned into the newly named Hackett-Freedman Gallery, located on the 500 block of Sutter Street, which expanded their offerings to include artists of the Bay Area Figurative tradition. It was natural for Diehl to forge a relationship with them since they had already worked together.
In 1997, Tracy Freedman visited Diehl’s studio in Mill Valley. Freedman liked what she saw, and they discussed what Diehl hoped to achieve in his career. Importantly, Hackett would later call Diehl and inform him that he and Freedman intended to immediately raise his prices 100%. With that, Diehl would be able to stop teaching, and devote his full time to painting, which is something that he was hoping to achieve with new gallery representation.
Diehl had solo exhibitions at Hackett-Freedman in 1998, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2007. The 2001 exhibition was reviewed by Kenneth Baker who noted Diehl’s “smooth, unfiniky realism” and his penchant for stacking objects “on a tabletop under raking daylight, with darkness behind.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 16, 2001.
For some art historians or critics, the question of whether realism and the still life genre could be pushed beyond historical traditions, permeates their assessment of the contemporary artists working within the style. In contrast to this thinking, Steven Nash, then-chief curator at the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco, understood that “For Guy Diehl, this has never been an issue. Diehl openly and enthusiastically embraces tradition in his work, finding in it sustenance for both structural and iconographic invention and proffering his dialogues with the past as a major vehicle of communication. Rather than a punishing lesson is ‘what has been,’ it opens doors to ‘what might be.’” Steven Nash, “Guy Diehl and History” in Guy Diehl, Recent Paintings, June 1998. Diehl’s use of artist postcard associations push the still life genre further: “The underlying point is that history, now in a different way, again informs the paintings in their expression and intent. Books and reproductions, as the materials that propagate art history, themselves become the subject of art, reminding us of the treasures of past traditions while positing the interaction of different cultural currents, although certainly without any of the sharp or bitter edge of postmodern irony.” Notwithstanding the historical considerations, Nash’s assessment of Diehl’s work is one shared by many viewers “Highly distilled on the one hand, yet offering much that is rich for the eye on the other, these paintings absorb us into their quiet mood of permanence.”
Diehl’s 2007 solo exhibition “A Dialogue with Tradition: The Art of Guy Diehl” at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art was previewed in The Sonoma Index-Tribute, “Diehl is a contemporary still-life painter with a style that is formally realist yet entirely postmodern. His luminous acrylic paintings focus less on photo-realism than on the relationships between objects and the play of light around and among them. Calling attention to the context and hidden beauty of the overlooked, his compositions juxtapose natural objects such as seashells, flowers or pieces of fruit with manmade objects such as art reproductions, glass bottles and finely bound books.” The newspaper’s staff writer noted “Surfaces are velvety, colors are rich and every object is an exquisite specimen.” The Sonoma Index-Tribune, November 6, 2007.
After four successful exhibitions together, in 2009, Freedman called Diehl to inform him that she and Hackett had decided to close the gallery. The economic downturn at the end of 2008 had made them weary of committing to a lengthy new 10-year lease and Freedman noted they were ready to take a break; they wanted to leave on a high note.
Two years later Hackett would open a new gallery, Hackett-Mill Gallery, with his former gallery director Francis Mill, focusing their energies on the secondary market and a select group of elder, living artists.
Diehl worked with Sullivan Gross Gallery in Santa Barbara for less than a year. Frank Gross had reached out once he heard about the closing of Hackett-Freedman Gallery and Diehl was summarily included in three successive group shows in 2010.
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
In 2010, Lisa Dolby Chadwick, of the Dolby Chadwick Gallery, approached Diehl and started the discussion of working together. Chadwick’s prestige had been consistently rising since starting her own gallery in 1997. An artist herself, having worked as a photographer while in college, she opened her own business after first working in another gallery. Chadwick focused “on works wherein the artist’s dedication to craft, observation, and materials is evident.” Chadwick was representing a diverse group of fine artists including Alex Kanevsky, John DiPaolo, and Sherie’ Franssen. Two other Hackett-Freedman artists, Ann Gale and Terry St. John, also joined her gallery.
At the time Diehl began working with the gallery, Chadwick’s reputation and influence was established. She had started representing sculptor Stephen De Staebler’s estate and had embarked on co-organizing a major De Staebler retrospective exhibition at the De Young Museum in 2012. It was a show cited by San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker as among the best of the year.
Diehl has had solo exhibitions at Dolby Chadwick in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, and 2020; additionally, he’s been included in a variety of group shows.
In 2010, Diehl worked with the Davis Mural Team Project in Davis, CA, painting “Still Life with Billie Holiday,” a 9 x 11 foot mural located on the side wall of Davis Ace Hardware in downtown Davis, California. It was a project coordinated by The John Natsoulas Gallery and part of the municipality’s arts program. Diehl’s mural was based a 36 x 41 inch canvas painting, “Still Life with Billie Holiday.”
In the summer of 2018, Diehl’s solo exhibition opened in the Moradian Gallery of the Fresno Museum of Art. A selection of paintings, etchings, and drawings was exhibited.
Selections from the Still Life Series, 2013–2020
Magnolia Editions
In 1987, Ardis Allport of The Allport Gallery reintroduced Diehl to Don Farnsworth who he had briefly known when he worked at Editions Press. Farnsworth now had his own fine art printing press and handmade paper mill in Oakland, Magnolia Editions, which he operates with his wife Era.
Diehl printed his first multicolored limited-edition lithograph with Magnolia in 1988 and thereafter, for the next thirty-three years, began making editions of various images every few years or so. Additionally, Diehl worked at Magnolia in collaboration with his former Cal State Hayward instructor, Mel Ramos, in 2016 and 2017.
Diehl visits Magnolia on a weekly basis working with Master Printers Tallulah Terryll and Nicholas Price. Before the advent of digital technology, he would often take a proof image home to work from, as in the case of a thirteen color litho, where each color was separately hand drawn, and later transferred onto lithography plates to be printed. Now, he tends to complete the process at Magnolia, devoting whatever time is necessary, sometimes working several weeks or months.
As Farnsworth began developing woven tapestry technology, Diehl worked on that project, making four of his still life images available as a tapestry (in an edition of eight). Farnsworth sought to invite other artists to work with the new technology; as a result, Kiki Smith, Chuck Close, Deborah Oropallo, Hung Liu, William Wiley, Bruce Conner, among others, have produced large scale tapestries at Magnolia Editions.
Jacquard tapestry (edition of 8), 70 x 80 inches, 2005.
On occasion, Diehl works at Magnolia without any preconceived idea or purpose, experimenting freely with materials which Farnsworth encourages; sometimes even developing new techniques in collaboration. Diehl also often assists in other projects Farnsworth is engaged in; for instance, the historical re-creation of 15th Century handmade linen paper. Diehl’s long-standing presence at Magnolia Editions has earned him the moniker of “artist in residence,” which at this point in their relationship seems fairly permanent.
In 2020, eighteen years after seeing the original, Diehl made a reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s famous 1912 paperboard constructed cubist guitar. He utilized a number of reference materials, including photographs of the original on display in The Museum of Modern Art (New York) as part of their permanent collection, and a 360-degree rotation video of the guitar, to duplicate its specifications. The completed work was a ⅓ scale in height, facsimile of the original.
After a visit to Diehl’s studio, Era and Don Farnsworth conceived of enlarging the project. At that point, Diehl and Farnsworth began making trial versions of near full-scale guitars. They eventually produced a step-by-step educational construction guide sharing what they had learned about how Picasso created his iconic paperboard cubist guitar, which makers in residence of the United States can download.
The project heightened their already existing respect for Picasso’s artistic vision, as they marveled at the choices Picasso executed to realize his vision of an object typically presented in the utilitarian form. The instruction manual was published as an homage to him and understanding its construction as a three-dimensional cubist object.
In 2019, the Winfield Gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea began exhibiting Diehl’s work. It is offered among a wide array of fine artists including David Ligare, James Weeks (estate), Pamela Carroll, Amy Weiskopf, and Marc Trujillo.
Conclusion
Guy Diehl’s development as an artist continues to this day. As of the publication of this essay, he’s completed over 420 canvas paintings since the start of the still life series in 1985 and remains deeply committed to the genre and the challenges painting poses. The wonder that his canvases reveal today are as immediate as they were when he first began drawing as a young man in Pennsylvania over 60 years ago.
— Matt Gonzalez
Further reading
Guy Diehl, Forging an Art Life (Part One)
Guy Diehl: Realist with a Minimalist Aesthetic (Art Review in Juxtapoz Magazine)
Acknowledgment: Various conversations between artist Guy Diehl and Matt Gonzalez, which informed this essay, occurred between November 5, 2020 and February 22, 2021, in San Francisco and Marin County.
