The RA is bringing the work of a man described by the Washington Post as one of America’s “finest abstract painters” to a UK audience for the first time in more than 20 years. Outstanding works from Diebenkorn’s different phases comprise the show.

From the Royal Academy:  “We begin in the early 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism was a dominant force on the East Coast. Diebenkorn initially embraced abstraction, before making what was a surprising change of direction to figuration in the mid-1950s, which would persist until the mid 1960s. Then, returning to abstraction in the late 1960s, we look at his famous Ocean Park series, which according to the Boston Globe includes “some of the most beautiful works of art created in America or anywhere else since the Second World War. Diebenkorn’s seductive colour palettes and intricately balanced compositions draw from the light and a sense of the places in which he worked, and define a career that spanned more than four decades. It is our privilege to share his creations. As art historian John Elderfield aptly put it: “he renews your belief in painting.””