Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud (born 1920) is a painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, toys and lipsticks.

Thiebaud was born to Mormon parents in Mesa, Arizona, America. He was brought to Long Beach, CA at the age of six months. He spent over ten years working in New York and Hollywood as a cartoonist and advertisement designer, a period interrupted by four years serving with the US Army Air Force from 1942 to 1946. Thiebaud's formal art training was provided under the G.I. Bill at San Jose State College and the California State College in Sacramento. He received a teaching appointment at Sacramento Junior College in 1951, while still in graduate school. He reamined there for eight years after which he joined the University of California, Davis as professor of art. For Thiebaud, Northern California was a pleasant change compared to Long Beach, which he said "almost seemed a Northeastern city. It had a train station and the leaves even changed colors with the seasons."

Thiebaud spent time working in food preparation, and is best known for his paintings of production line objects found in diners and cafeterias, such as pies and pastries. As a young man in Long Beach, he worked at a cafe called Mile High and Red Hot, where "Mile High" was ice cream and "Red Hot" was hot dogs. His artistic leanings were originally inspired by cartoons and comic strips such as George Herriman's "Krazy Kat." The teenage Thiebaud established himself as a cartoonist, working for a brief time as an animator for the Walt Disney studios and drawing a regular comic strip during his World War II stint in the Army Air Force. He also spent time as a poster designer and commercial artist in both California and New York before eventually deciding to become a painter. He was associated with the Pop Art painters in his interest with 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. He has also been seen, due to his true to life representations, as a predecessor of photorealism. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included.

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.

He went on to paint popular characters such as Mickey Mouse and recent paintings such as 'Sunset Streets' (1985) and 'Flatland River' (1997) are notable for their hyper realism, in some ways similar to Edward Hopper in his fascination with the mundane scenes from everyday American life.

Thiebaud includes Giorgio Morandi as one of his inspirations. He admires the work of Vermeer, Diego Velasquez, and Degas. Thiebaud considers himself not an artist, but a painter. He is a voracious reader and known for reading poetry to his students. His favorite poet is William Carlos Williams. Thiebaud loves tennis and chocolate.

Today, Thiebaud's only dealer is Allan Stone, who gave him his first break, and is located in New York City.

External links

Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective (http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa547.htm), an article about an exhibit in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.zh:偉恩·第伯