Courtesty of the Museum Of New Mexico Press

Richard Diebenkorn works on a mural he painted for Joan Evans in Old Town between 1950 — the year he arrived in Albuquerque from California — and 1952. Diebenkorn's work during his 30-month stay in New Mexico is the subject of a show at New York University.

Courtesty of the Museum Of New Mexico Press

"Untitled" (1950), oil on canvas, by Richard Diebenkorn, from the Jonson Gallery at the University of New Mexico.

Courtesty of the Museum Of New Mexico Press

"Untitled" (1951), oil on canvas, by Richard Diebenkorn, from the Jonson Gallery at the University of New Mexico.

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From the start, Gerald Nordland was knocked out of his socks by artist Richard Diebenkorn's abstract paintings.

He saw his first Diebenkorn in 1948 in an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art.

"It was just one work, but I was blown away by it," Nordland, 80, said this week during a phone interview from his home in Chicago. "It was abstract, strong, bold colors, heavy paint. It was not large, but it had a great deal of assurance and dignity."

When he saw that first painting, Nordland had no inkling he would become the leading authority on Diebenkorn. He's the author of 1987's "Richard Diebenkorn," reissued in an expanded edition in 2001, and a contributor of one of the essays in the 2007 Museum of New Mexico Press volume, "Richard Diebenkorn in New Mexico."

The latter is a companion to the Diebenkorn exhibition that opened at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos during the summer and is now at New York University's Grey Art Gallery. Work produced by Diebenkorn from 1950-52, during his 30 months as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, is the subject of the book and the exhibit.

Nordland, who would devote many days and hours interviewing Diebenkorn, said the artist's time in Albuquerque was his most fruitful and pivotal.

"I think he was getting away from the influences that shaped him in his early years, getting away from the mentors who influenced him," Nordland said. "He was asserting his independence, daring to be as original as he was capable of being."

Nordland, who was born in Hollywood and attended school at the University of Southern California, met Diebenkorn in the late '40s in California, where the artist was a student and later a junior instructor at the California School of Fine Arts.

In the last part of August or the early part of September 1951, more than a year after Diebenkorn had moved to Albuquerque, fledgling art historian Nordland set out from Los Angeles in a 1938 Ford — recently outfitted with new tires — on his way to New Haven, Conn., to do research at Yale University.

But on the way, he made a point of stopping in Albuquerque to visit Diebenkorn and his wife, Phyllis.

Diebenkorn was 29 at the time and well into his efforts to contribute to American abstract painting.

"I bought two or three little things, and told him that if my '38 Ford made it to New Haven, I'd buy something else," Nordland said. "It did, and I did."

During his first year in Albuquerque, Diebenkorn lived in a cottage on Gabaldon Road, just east of the Rio Grande and just south of where I-40 is today. Nordland said the colors, the light and the landscape of New Mexico influenced the artist's abstract work here.

"There are people who refer to (his New Mexico work) as landscapes, but he didn't think of them as landscapes," Nordland said. "But landscapes somehow leaked in. Those light experiences that are environmental undoubtedly had an impact on his work."

Nordland said Raymond Jonson, a prominent faculty member in UNM's art department and a talented modernist painter in his own right, also had an impact on Diebenkorn's work — mainly by letting the artist alone so he could pursue his instincts.

Unlike other, more conservative faculty members, Jonson believed in nonrepresentational and abstract art, believed in looking forward, not backward.

"Jonson defended Dick (Diebenkorn) in every way," Nordland said. "I think he had a real role of being a mature, older professional who recognized in Dick a kind of purpose and an integration of ideas and skills."

Jonson and Diebenkorn would meet occasionally to discuss art and who knows what else, but Nordland said Jonson realized that what Diebenkorn needed was not a teacher but the time to work.

"He directed Dick to go ahead and paint," he said.

That's what Diebenkorn did — tirelessly.

"He would work from 10 in the morning until as late as there was decent light," Nordland said. "He felt like (his time in Albuquerque) was his first opportunity to be independent."

During this time, Diebenkorn accepted a commission to do a mural in the Old Town apartment of a woman named Joan Evans.

Nordland said efforts to find that apartment and the mural have not been successful.

"One of the laments of life is that things do get lost," he said. "Cities change; buildings get torn town; things get painted over.

"Sometimes they are still there. What an effort it would be to take off 40 or 50 years of paint and find a mural."

Diebenkorn died in Berkeley, Calif., in March 1993, less than a month shy of his 71st birthday.

Nordland said that today some of Diebenkorn's works are in the million-dollar category.

And he said the abstract expressionist art with which Diebenkorn experienced his most success came into full bloom during his time in Albuquerque.

"He was most adventurous and expansive in New Mexico," Nordland said, "and it stood him in good stead for the rest of his life."