Wayne Thiebaud

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Wayne Thiebaud (born November 23, 1920) is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, toys and lipsticks. His last name is pronounced "Tee-bo." He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, however, his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. He has also been seen, due to his true to life representations, as a predecessor to photorealism. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.

Contents 1 Life and career 2 Work 3 Influences 4 Trivia

[edit] Life and career

Thiebaud was born to Mormon parents in Mesa, Arizona, U.S.A.. His family moved to Long Beach, California when he was six months old. Thiebaud spent over ten years working in New York and Hollywood as a cartoonist and advertisement designer. These stints were interrupted for four years, from 1942 to 1946, while Thiebaud served as a member of the United States Army Air Force. Wayne Thiebaud's formal art training was paid for by the G.I. Bill. He studied at San Jose State College and the California State University, Sacramento. He received a teaching appointment at Sacramento Junior College in 1951, while still in graduate school. He remained there for eight years after which he joined the University of California, Davis as an art professor, where he is a professor today. He currently (2007) teaches one class per year. His favorite food is cheese.

Wayne Thiebaud has said that Northern California was a pleasant change from Long Beach, and that Sacramento "almost seemed a Northeastern city. It had a train station and the leaves even changed colors with the seasons."

Thiebaud's first solo exhibition was at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, and between the years of 1954 and 1957, he produced eleven educational films for which he was awarded the Scholastic Art Prize in 1961. In the spring of 1962, Thiebaud exhibited for the first time at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York. This exhibition was followed by his first solo museum show - in San Francisco at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. Later that year he was included in the landmark group exhibition, New Realists, at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York.

Today, Thiebaud's art dealer continues to be Allan Stone (1932-2006), the man who gave him his first "break" decades ago. The Allan Stone Gallery is currently located in New York City.

[edit] Work

Thiebaud is best known for his paintings of production line objects found in diners and cafeterias, such as pies and pastries. Many wonder if he spent time working in the food industry, and in fact he did. As a young man in Long Beach, he worked at a cafe named Mile High and Red Hot, where "Mile High" was ice cream and "Red Hot" was a hot dog.

He was associated with the Pop art painters because of his interest in objects of mass culture, however, his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists, suggesting that Thiebaud may have had a great influence on the movement. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.

In addition to pastries, Thiebaud has painted landscapes, streetscapes, and popular characters such as Mickey Mouse. His recent paintings such as 'Sunset Streets' (1985) and 'Flatland River' (1997) are noted for their hyper realism, and are in some ways similar to Edward Hopper's work, who was fascinated with mundane scenes from everyday American life.

[edit] Influences

Thiebaud includes Giorgio Morandi as one of his inspirations. He also admires the work of Vermeer, Diego Velasquez, Degas and lots of other talented artists.

[edit] Trivia

Thiebaud considers himself not an artist, but a painter. He is a voracious reader and is known for reading poetry to his students. His favorite poet is William Carlos Williams.

• • • A painter of pop-art combined with a great respect for traditional methods and subject matter, Wayne Thiebaud is one of the most prominent of the Bay Area painters in California in the latter part of the 20th century. His reputation has spread far beyond his own state.
    • In his painting, he focuses on the commonplace in a way that suggests irony and objective distance from his subjects. He also makes a point of keeping an independent distance from the New York art scene.
    • He was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920. One summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Studio. The next summer he studied at a Los Angeles trade school. He earned a degree from Sacramento State College in 1941. From 1938 to 1949, he worked as a cartoonist and designer in California and New York and served as an artist in the United States Army.
    • In 1950, at the age of thirty, he enrolled in Sacramento State where he earned a Master's Degree in 1952 and began teaching at Sacramento City College. In 1960, he became assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, where he remained through the 1970s and influenced numerous artist students. However, he did not have much following among Conceptualists because of his adherence to basically traditional disciplines, emphasis on hard work rather than creativity, and love of realism.
    • On a leave of absence, he spent time in New York City where he became friends with Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline and was much influenced by these abstractionists as well as Pop Artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. During this time, he began a series of very small paintings based on images of food displayed in windows, and he focused on their basic shapes.
    • Returning to California, he pursued this subject matter and style, isolating triangles, circles, squares, etc. He also co-founded the Artists Cooperative gallery, now Artists Contemporary Gallery, and other cooperatives including Pond Farm, having been exposed to the concept of cooperatives in New York.
    • In 1960, he had his first one-man show in San Francisco at the Museum of Art and in New York at the Staempfli and Tanager galleries. These shows received little notice, but two years later, a 1962 Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition in New York officially launched Pop Art, bringing him national recognition although he disclaimed being anything other than a painter of illusionistic form.
    • In 1963, he turned increasingly to figure painting, wooden and rigid with each detail sharply emphasized; in 1967 his work was shown at the Biennale Internationale
    • One of Thiebaud's successful students from Sacramento City College was renowned artist, Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) who went on to become a major influence in the direction of Indian art through his instruction at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1964-1969).

He is incredibly famous!