Featured Artist: Wayne Thiebaud

Mid-Century artist.

Why do I love him?

Is it because he paints

cakes, pies, ice-cream, pastry shops?

Hmmm......

Nope, cuz he paints really awesome

portraits, too.

And really good landscapes/urban landscapes too....

A bit about his life and history

(thank you Wikipaedia....)

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. One summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Pictures Walt Disney Studio making 'in-betweeners' of Goofy, Pinocchio, and Jimminy Cricket making $14 a week. The next summer he studied at the Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles. From 1938 to 1949, he worked as a cartoonist and designer in California and New York. He served as an artist in the United States Army Air Force from 1942-45.^[1]

In 1949, he enrolled at San Jose State College (now San Jose State University) before transferring to Sacramento State College (now California State University, Sacramento), where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1951 and a master's degree in 1952. He subsequently 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 art students. Thiebaud did not have much of a following among Conceptual artists because of his adherence to basically traditional disciplines, emphasis on hard work as a supplement to creativity, and love of realism. Occasionally, he gave pro bono lectures at U.C. Davis.

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 proto 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 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and in New York City 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 1961 Thiebaud met and became friends with Allan Stone (1932–2006),^[1] the man who gave him his first "break" decades ago. Stone was Thiebaud's dealer until Stone's death in 2006. Stone said of Thiebaud "I have had the pleasure of friendship with a complex and talented man, a terrific teacher and cook, the best raconteur in the west with a spin serve, and a great painter whose magical touch is exceeded only by his genuine modesty and humility. Thiebaud's dedication to painting and his pursuit of excellence inspire all who are lucky enough to come in contact with him. He is a very special man." The Allan Stone Gallery is currently located in New York City and carries many other pop-artists artwork. Since Stone's death, Thiebaud's son Paul Thiebaud (1960–2010) had taken over as his dealer. Paul Thiebaud was a successful art dealer in his own right and had eponymous galleries in Manhattan and San Francisco. (note: Paul Thiebaud died on the 19th June 2010)

In 1962 Thiebaud's work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Edward Ruscha, and Robert Dowd, in the historically important and ground-breaking "New Painting of Common Objects," curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum [1]. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first Pop Art exhibitions in America. These painters were part of a new movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked America and the art world and changed art forever.

In 1963 he turned increasingly to figure painting, wooden and rigid with each detail sharply emphasized. In 1964 he made his first prints at Crown Point Press, and has continued to make prints throughout his career. In 1967 his work was shown at the Biennale Internationale.

Pretty kewl dude, eh?

Have had a crazy week or so.

I have been imbibing in my 

drug of choice...

Diet Pepsi.

I stop, then I start.

Then I stop,

then I start.

Energy in a bottle.

For the above 50 crowd.

; )

It makes me want to sing a song, then 

go clean my car battery 

(did you know that if you 

pour a can of Pepsi or Coke on your

car battery it will

clean your battery  

real squeaky clean???)

Do the diet, as there

is no stickiness afterward.

Yikes.

It makes me feel so young.

Love to all of you little

pre-valentiners 

out there.

Get ready...cuz here it comes!

xoox d