Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Wayne Thiebaud

Morton Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021) was an American painter and printmaker who was perhaps best known for his thickly painted American still lifes of such items as foods and cosmetics.He enrolled at San Jose State College (now San Jose State University) in 1949 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 is recognized as one of the major American art figures of the second half of the 20th century, although his rich and luminous depictions of midcentury Americana separated him from the classic Pop Art of the time.Thiebaud is associated with the pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture; his early works were executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predating the works of classic pop artists.Thiebaud was more often than not absorbed in traditional problems of painting — how to create depth without sacrificing the two-dimensionality of painting and how objects relate to one another.Through seemingly simple still lifes, Thiebaud evokes stories of plenty and loss, prompting an emotional response from the viewer that is absent in Pop Art.His successful paintings were mainly based on food and sweets such as pies, cakes and suckers, which were considered a luxury by him at that time.The artist worked from life, not from media images, and his engagement was evident in his loose brushstroke, whereas a hard-edge painting style, signifying mechanical reproduction, was preferred by some.Thiebaud used heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements were almost always included in his work.More of Wayne Thiebaud’s enchanting paintings can be found at https://www.wikiart.org/en/wayne-thiebaud and https://www.theartstory.org/artist/thiebaud-wayne/.