The American painter Richard Diebenkorn was ruggedly independent. He made his career in California, far away from New York's art scene. He switched from abstraction to representation in 1955, when Abstract Expressionism became dominant in New York. He returned to abstraction in 1967, when Pop Art made figuration again fashionable. From that time on, until his death in 1993, he created his best-known work, the series of lyrical abstract paintings entitled Ocean Park.

Diebenkorn painted this nude, one of only a handful, halfway through his figurative period. The model's massive body, with full breasts and stomach, consists of overlapping layers of luminous hues ranging from pink to plum. The stark foreshortening of her face gives a mere suggestion of her features. The artist provides no indication of a chair, a bed, or any other support, nor does he care for the eroticism or languid abandon often associated with the depiction of the female nude. Diebenkorn has instead replaced the sensually physical qualities of the nude with purely painterly ones.