Today I am featuring the delectable work
of artist Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920).
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| alicenell.blogspot.com |
Wayne Thiebaud's long career is reflected in a wide range of subject matter, but he will probably always be associated with the canvases of pastries that made him famous in the 1960s.
As a teenager, Thiebaud spent a summer working at the Walt Disney Studio, drawing the "in-betweens" that provide the illusion of motion from one animated gesture to another. His earliest jobs were as a cartoonist and commercial artist. After his WWII Army service, Thiebaud earned a BFA and MFA from what is now California State University, and he became a college art professor shortly thereafter.
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| artic.edu | postcrossing.com |
In the late 1950s, Thiebaud started painting what I will refer to as retail still lifes. Though this work predates Pop Art, by happy coincidence Thiebaud was associated with Pop Artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and had his work exhibited with theirs in the first major Pop Art shows of 1962.
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| nga.gov |
Thiebaud's style is geometric and includes ...
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| nga.gov |
... as you can see in this detail, richly textured applications of paint that seem so complementary to his subject matter.
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| newyorker.com |
His shadows are rich in color, and while his subjects fall within realism, the coloration is decidedly impressionistic. While Wayne Thiebaud benefited from being associated with Pop Art, it would be wrong to attempt to box him into any style — his work is unique.
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| purefecto.com |
In the 1970s and 1980s, Thiebaud painted distinctly geometric street scenes, and in the 1990s, he turned to aerial landscapes that are a gorgeous world of realism and abstraction:
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| poulwebb.blogspot.com |
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| artfixdaily.com |
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| famsf.org |
In 1994, President Clinton presented Wayne Thiebaud with the National Medal of Arts, and today, at age 92, Thiebaud still creates delectable, lush paintings.
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