Phyllis Diebenkorn

Phyllis Diebenkorn (n?e Gilman)

Passed away in her sleep at her San Francisco apartment on January 19, 2015. She was born on September 2, 1921 to Harold and Nellie Gilman (later Fryer) in Glendale, California.
Phyllis attended Stanford University, where she met and married her husband of 50 years, the artist Richard Diebenkorn. After the war, they returned to the Bay Area for Mr. Diebenkorn to attend the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). After time in Woodstock, New York; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Urbana, Illinois; they settled in Berkeley, California with their two children. Phyllis enrolled in the Psychology PhD program at University of California, Berkeley, in 1954 and worked at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research. She was one of few women in the program.
After they moved to Santa Monica in 1966, Phyllis continued to focus on her husband's growing career, maintaining an active record of Diebenkorn's artworks and their associated provenance, bibliographic references, and exhibition histories.
The couple traveled extensively, most notably to the Soviet Union in 1964 as part of a cultural exchange program organized by the U.S. Department of State. There they visited the restricted art collections at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, seeing works by Matisse, C?zanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Malevich, and others. On other European trips, the couple often drove through the countryside, visiting small towns and museums. Over the years they spent considerable time in the South of France at the home of dear friends. The couple twice travelled to Japan for the artist to make woodblock prints with Crown Point Press.
The Diebenkorns moved to Healdsburg, California in 1988. After Mr. Diebenkorn's death in 1993, Phyllis worked tirelessly to promote his legacy by aiding curators in large scale exhibitions of his work, beginning a catalogue raisonn? project, and eventually setting up the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. Exhibitions of Richard Diebenkorn's work at major museums are indebted to her keen eye and generous spirit.
Phyllis was deeply loved by her close-knit family and friends. She adored dogs, was an exceptional cook, and a voracious reader. She is survived by her daughter, Gretchen (Richard Grant), her son, Christopher; grandchildren Phyllis Grant (Matthew Ross) and Benjamin Grant (Kelley Kahn); great-grandchildren Isabel and Dashiell Ross, and Caleb Grant Kahn.