lkkkkllAfter finishing his studies in New Mexico, Diebenkorn took a teaching job at the University of Champagne-Urbana in Illinois. Urbana provided a true middle-America experience for the devoted Westerner. The cold, dark, suburban aesthetic was very different from anything he had painted before. “In Albuquerque {my color] was subdued, austere, black, gray and white…[The Urbana color] is something that a very different kind of environment produced.” In his Urbana series, Diebenkorn returned to using blue. The hues are often brighter than the brown industrial landscape in which he was living. Similiarly, the compositions have very active brushwork and organic imagery which do reflect the obvious flatness of the Midwest.
kkkkkUrbana No. 2, also known as The Archer, is one of Diebenkorn’s most famous works of the period. Painted in 1953, it is one of his first big scale works to include black, dark green, and blue as main colors. It is also the only painting that he intentionally made semi-representational: there is a bow like object in the upper left hand corner which earned the work its title. The painting is full of energy and has an anxious and violent edge to it. Black lines are slashed across a white background while there are huge blocks of green and blue. These elements may suggest a clashing of the psyche with the landscape. Inspiration for the line work was allegedly taken from the ancient cave paintings in Alta Mira, Spain.
kkkkkWhile in Urbana, Dienbenkorn refined the abstract vocabulary that he had begun in Albuquerque. Ultimately, though, the bleak environment did not prove to be a desirable residence for the artist. He subsequently spent the summer of 1953 in New York, and returned home to Northern California in the fall.