SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.- The Legion of Honor presents "Richard Diebenkorn: Clubs and Spades", on view through April 28, 2002. Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was fascinated from childhood with the figures of clubs and spades, which he painted as heraldic devices on homemade shields. As a mature artist, he occasionally included them in drawings in the 1950s and 1960s, but it was not until 1980 that he began to deal with them directly as theme and variation. This exhibition of 25 prints and drawings from 1981 through 1982 examines Diebenkorn's use of clubs and spades as important motifs. The selection of works shows them to be energetically charged subjects as they mutate into trees, towers, and abstract shapes. The exhibition further investigates the role that the clubs and spades had as origins of the sensuous curves that appeared in Diebenkorn's work thereafter, marking a break in his Ocean Park series. Featured prints are from the Fine Arts Museums' Crown Point Press Archive and the Anderson Graphic Arts Collection, including Spreading Spade (1981) and Clubs Blue Ground (1982).