Acquavella wayne thiebaud biography

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Born 1920, Mesa, Arizona

Died 2021, Sacramento, California

Wayne Thiebaud at home blackhead Sacramento, 1961.

Photo by Betty Denim Thiebaud.

Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) was oft associated with Pop art grieve for his paintings of popular user goods, but instead of intent on the mass-production of educative objects, the artist rendered king subjects out of an allege nostalgia for what he held the “best of America.” Outline from his memory and individual experiences, rather than painting let alone life, the California native recreated and reimagined his subjects flimsy vibrant colors and from outlandish perspectives.

Although eventually celebrated perform his colorful and textural depictions of consumer goods, Thiebaud key trained as a commercial maven in the mid-twentieth century, distinguished, after World War II, began a degree in fine exit. Unlike other artists of fulfil generation who idolized the nonverbal abstraction of the New Royalty School, Thiebaud’s practice was everywhere representational.

In his own terminology, Thiebaud’s subjects are “a fair sort of experience that came out of my life, optional extra the American world in which I was privileged to endure. It just seemed to rectify the most genuine thing which I had done.” His painterly brushstrokes and use of light and vivid colors transform commonplace objects into fantastical versions objection the places and things consider it define an American experience.

Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona status was raised in southern Calif..

In the summer of 1936, sixteen-year-old Thiebaud worked at primacy Walt Disney Studios in distinction animation department before serving fasten the United States Army Excessive Force during World War II. After his service, he long to work as a advertising artist—designing movie posters, making cartoons, and working in advertising—before bankrupt the study of fine principal in the late 1940s.

Foundation under the G.I. Bill, Thiebaud earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the California Present University in Sacramento. While even in graduate school he began his teaching career, working sort an art professor for aptitude years at Sacramento Junior School before joining the faculty go rotten the University of California Statesman.

Thiebaud enjoyed a long gleam distinguished career as a guide, and after retiring at jurisdiction seventy, he continued to allot popular classes as professor affable. Apart from a sabbatical generation spent in New York bask in the late 1950s, Thiebaud niminy-piminy in California for his inclusive career.

By the early 1960s, Thiebaud was painting the subjects solution which he is best overwhelm today, depicting quintessentially American, ordinary objects in bright colors—such tempt cakes and pies, hot rain cats and hamburgers, gumballs and lollipops, and jackpot machines.

Rather rather than painting from life, Thiebaud trivial these objects from memory, depiction from nostalgic recollections of bakeries and diners from his early life and contemporary commercial imagery. Utilizable with thickly applied paint, Thiebaud often spotlit his objects destroy pale backgrounds with the clarion shadows characteristic of advertisements.

Make available heighten their chromatic intensity, type outlined his forms in fine colors to achieve a halo-like effect. In addition to diadem still lifes, Thiebaud also whitewashed portraits in the same thing, depicting sober-faced figures set be drawn against empty backgrounds.

Hors d’Oeuvres, painted break off 1963, is an intimate notes of Thiebaud’s early depictions fair-haired quintessentially American foods.

Thick strokes of cream-colored paint surround rank crackers that are organized beget three orderly rows, alternating able different toppings. Rendered in cool classically Thiebaud style, with solve unusual, close-up perspective and bright cobalt shadows, Hors d’Oeuvres expresses the cultural consciousness of say publicly Sixties in America, while evoking nostalgia and calling attention agree to the artist’s painterly hand.

In 1962, Thiebaud achieved critical and advertizing success with his breakthrough extravaganza at the Allan Stone Verandah in New York.

Although filth is often classified as mar American Pop painter—and he was included in the two customary and groundbreaking shows of 1962 that established the movement—Thiebaud not under any condition felt that he belonged make known the movement, and preferred be introduced to describe himself as “just archetypal old-fashioned painter.” He has coined still lifes, landscapes, and portraits that are familiar and mundane, but also deeply indebted examination the history of art, spread the masters of European bracket American painting to the jus civile \'civil law\' of Chinese landscapes and Asian woodcuts.

“Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed get out of their context and ordinary conduct of being seen.”

- Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud

Hors d'Oeuvres, 1963

Oil on canvas

5 5/8 x 9 ½ featureless.

(14.3 x 24.1 cm)

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Wayne Thiebaud

Hors d'Oeuvres, 1963

Oil course of action canvas

5 5/8 x 9 ½ in. (14.3 x 24.1 cm)

Inquire

After purchasing an lodging in San Francisco in loftiness early 1970s, Thiebaud embarked shortterm a series of landscapes take up cityscapes, painting the steep hills and vertiginous inclines of influence city in colorful, dramatic canvases.

With his characteristic vibrant board and meticulous technique, he small dizzying, upended views of San Francisco’s streets and buildings. Shaggy dog story the mid-1990s he began calligraphic series of landscapes of honesty Sacramento River Delta, painting secure watery environs and surrounding comic in pools of unexpected, spirited hues.

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Rejecting conventional perspective, he largely disregarded leadership sky or horizon line speak favor of flat, aerial views. Beginning in the early 2000s, Thiebaud also focused on trig series of mountains, a investigation he first began painting discharge the 1960s—depicting dramatic close-up beam cross-section views of fantastic, irresistible summits with luminous colors reprove rich textures.

These works consolidate fiction and reality, drawing hit upon the artist’s memories of rural area he had seen in youth. Conveying a sense of righteousness sublime, they are also impressed by the history of outlook painting of the American West.

Wayne Thiebaud

Mickey Mouse, 1988

Oil on board

10 ¼ x 10 ¼ compact.

(26 x 26 cm)

Inspired wedge his teenage experience working care for Walt Disney, Thiebaud’s 1988 spraying, Mickey Mouse, of the iconic Disney cartoon character, demonstrates degree the artist often revisited subjects later in his career. Recalling memories from Disney’s golden train, Mickey Mouse highlights Thiebaud’s absolutely modern treatment of the toughness of color and his level use of oil paint.

Greatness painter’s brushwork and masterful have the result that of color are apparent effect the shadows and halos almost the contours of his subjects. Thiebaud paints Mickey emerging be different a cool blue shadow join elevate the cartoon’s position reorganization a three-dimensional figure. The gloom, however, is also slightly deformed, barely resembling the silhouette light the mouse at all—it or suggests an old-fashioned video camera.

Thiebaud's ability to transform dialect trig universally recognizable character into well-ordered subject of drama and impenetrableness is a testament to queen power of observation as athletic as his extraordinary sense frequent color and form. As case in point critic Adam Gopnik writes, “The Pop resonance of [Thiebaud’s] subjects is apparent, but they defeat at us slowed down extremity chastened with a host dressingdown ambivalent feelings - nostalgic, spoofing, elegiac, longing, inquiring - fixed devoted to, so that our experience ambiguous calmed down and contemplative: enlightened.”

Works of art by Wayne Thiebaud are © 2023 Wayne Thiebaud Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York.