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Biography

Wayne Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920, and was raised in southern California. He admired cartoons and comic strips from a young age and began his career as a commercial artist in his teens. He worked as a sign painter and apprenticed as an animator for The Walt Disney Studios before serving in the United States Army Air Force during World War II. After his service, he continued to work as a commercial artist—designing movie posters, making cartoons, and working in advertising—before pursuing the study of fine art in the late 1940s. Studying under the G.I. Bill, Thiebaud earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the California State University in Sacramento. While still in graduate school he began his teaching career, working as an art professor for eight years at Sacramento Junior College before joining the faculty of the University of California Davis. Thiebaud has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a teacher, and after retiring at age seventy, he continued to give popular classes as professor emeritus. Apart from a sabbatical year spent in New York in the late 1950s, Thiebaud has worked in California for his entire career.

By the early 1960s, Thiebaud had begun painting the works for which he is best known, depicting quintessentially American, everyday objects in bright colors—such as cakes and pies, hot dogs and hamburgers, gumballs and lollipops, and jackpot machines. Rather than painting from life, Thiebaud represented these objects from memory, drawing from nostalgic recollections of bakeries and diners from his youth and contemporary commercial imagery. Working with thickly applied paint, Thiebaud often spotlights his objects against pale backgrounds with the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements. In order to heighten their chromatic intensity, he outlines his forms in radiant colors to achieve a halo-like effect. In addition to his still lifes, Thiebaud also painted portraits in the same style, depicting solemn figures set against light, empty backgrounds.

In 1962, Thiebaud achieved critical and commercial success with his breakthrough show at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York, followed by his first solo museum show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Although he is often classified as an American Pop painter—and he was included in the two historic and groundbreaking shows of 1962 that established the movement—Thiebaud never embraced the mantle of Pop and preferred to describe himself as a traditional painter of illusionistic forms. He has created still lifes, landscapes, and portraits that are familiar and quotidian, but also deeply indebted to the history of art, from the masters of European and American painting to traditional Chinese landscapes and Japanese woodcuts.

After settling in San Francisco in the early 1970s, Thiebaud embarked on a series of landscapes and cityscapes, painting the steep hills and vertiginous inclines of the city in colorful, dramatic canvases. With his characteristic vibrant palette and meticulous technique, he represented dizzying, upended views of San Francisco’s streets and buildings. In the late 1990s he began a series of landscapes of the Sacramento River Delta, painting the watery landscape and surrounding fields in pools of unexpected, vibrant hues. Rejecting traditional perspective, he largely disregarded the sky or horizon line in favor of flat, aerial views. Since the early 2000s, Thiebaud has focused on his series of mountains, depicting dramatic close-up and cross-section views of fantastic, towering summits with luminous colors and rich textures. These works merge fiction and reality, drawing from the artist’s memories of mountains he had seen in childhood. Conveying a sense of the sublime, they are also influenced by the history of landscape painting of the American West.

Alongside his landscapes and portraits, Thiebaud continues to paint his signature still lifes of everyday items. Experimenting with color, texture, light, and composition, he has repeatedly tackled the same subjects to challenge and explore the formal possibilities of painting. He continues to live and work in Sacramento today.

Since 2012, Acquavella Galleries has held four exhibitions of Thiebaud's work. Most recently, Acquavella exhbited Wayne Thiebaud Mountains: 1965-2019 in November-December of 2019.

Photo by Betty Jean Thiebaud, 1961.

Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud
Summer Days New York April 26 - June 14, 2024
Painted Pop
Painted Pop
Palm Beach January 5 - February 11, 2024
Jean-Paul Riopelle, d’Un Jour Ensoleille
Around Color
New York July 12 - August 18, 2021
Andy Warhol
Impressionist, Modern, and Postwar Masters
Palm Beach April 1 - May 28, 2021
Courtland Reservoir
Wayne Thiebaud
Palm Beach December 20, 2020 - February 20, 2021
Wayne Thiebaud, "Cloud Ridge," 1967
Wayne Thiebaud
Mountains 1965-2019 November 5 - December 13, 2019
Henri Matisse, Boléro Violet, 1937
The Path of Modernism
From Impressionism to Today January 8-March 15, 2019, Open Monday - Friday, 10 am to 5 pm
Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #44, 1955
California Landscapes
Richard Diebenkorn | Wayne Thiebaud February 1 - March 16, 2018
Ed Ruscha, Rusty Silencers, 1979
Off Canvas: Drawing
April 14 – June 11, 2015
Wayne Thiebaud, Cold Case, 2010/2011/2013
Wayne Thiebaud
September 30 – November 20, 2014
Wayne Thiebaud, Shoe Rows, 1971
Wayne Thiebaud
A Retrospective October 22 – November 29, 2012
Wayne Thiebaud: Summer Days catalogue
Wayne Thiebaud: Summer Days
April 26 - June 14, 2024
California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn | Wayne Thiebaud cover
California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn | Wayne Thiebaud
Out of Print February - March 2018
Off Canvas: Drawing cover
Off Canvas: Drawing
April - June 2015
The Pop Object cover
The Pop Object: The Still Life Tradition in Pop Art
April - May 2013
Thiebaud, cover, high heels
Wayne Thiebaud (out of print)
A Retrospective October - November 2012
New Criterion
New Criterion
Summer Lights June 2024
The Brooklyn Rail
The Brooklyn Rail
Wayne Thiebaud: Summer Days June 2024
New York Sun
New York Sun
A New Show of Summer Brings the Beach and Hot Dogs to the Upper East Side June 2024
Luxury Magazine cover with Wayne Thiebaud Mountain Ridge
Luxury Magazine
As American as Pie: Pastel-colored paintings of pies and cakes launched his career, but there is more to the American Master WAYNE THIEBAUD than just desserts. Spring / Summer 2021
Portrait of Wayne Thiebaud
Artnet News
‘Enjoy It When You Have It, But Don’t Have Too Much’: Artist Wayne Thiebaud on How to Savor Cake While Staying Healthy at 100 Years Old November 13, 2020
Photograph of Wayne Thiebaud
The Wall Street Journal
Wayne Thiebaud's Vision of American Beauty November 6, 2020
Alta
Alta
Having His Cake and Eating It, Too October 12, 2020
Thiebaud, Green Dress, 1966
The Telegraph
Lasting Taste: Why Life is Still Sweet for Wayne Thiebaud at 96 May 29, 2017
Thiebaud, Bakery Case, 1966
T Magazine
At Tea with the Legendary Painter Wayne Thiebaud May 24, 2017
Border Crossings Magazine
Border Crossings Magazine
Wayne Thiebaud review by Benjamin Klein March 2020
Wayne Thiebaud, Nine Jelly Apples, 1964
The Wall Street Journal
'Wayne Thiebaud, Draftsman' Review: Whipping Up Sincere Confections" May 24, 2018

Best known for his paintings of cakes and ice cream, Wayne Thiebaud is also surprisingly talented, if orthodox, when it comes to work on paper.

Wayne Thiebaud, Ripley Ridge, 1977
Artforum
Review of "California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn | Wayne Thiebaud" March 29, 2018

By Donald Kuspit

Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #44, 1955
The New Criterion
The Critic's Notebook March 13, 2018

Review of California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn | Wayne Thiebaud in The Critic's Notebook.

Wayne Thiebaud, Ripley Ridge, 1977
The Brooklyn Rail
Review of "California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn / Wayne Thiebaud" by Hearne Pardee March 5, 2018

Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud defined a California vernacular int he early 1960s--Diebenkorn with suburban views of figures at windows and Thieabud with arrays of desserts. Their expansive, luminous spaces embraced the influences of de Kooning, Hopper, and Matisse, not to mention Persian miniatures and Japanese prints. But their work extends beyond that period, as evidenced by this dual show at Acquavella, which focuses on landscape and opens fresh perspectives on an artistic friendship that endures today as Thiebaud, the surviving partner, continues to paint at age 97.

Photograph of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud, around 1991
The Art Newspaper
A Friendly Scene: The Landscapes of Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn February 5, 2018

By James H. Miller

A show at Acquavella Galleries in New York brings together paintings by the two fast friends.

Wayne Thiebaud Book Cover
Architectural Digest
Artist Wayne Thiebaud Celebrates His 95th Birthday — and a New Book November 12, 2015
The New Yorker, August 19 and 26th, 2002 Cover
The New Yorker
Wayne Thiebaud: Oldies but Goodies November 10, 2014
Wayne Thiebaud, Man in an Orange Shirt, 1975
1st Dibs
Editor's Pick: Wayne Thiebaud October 29, 2014
Wayne Thiebaud, Cold Case, 2010/2011/2013
Art News
Welcome to the Good Life: Learning from Wayne Thiebaud October 7, 2014
Wayne Thiebaud, Dark Heart Cake, 2014
New York Observer
11 Things to Do in New York's Art World Before October 6 September 29, 2014
Food and Wine Magazine Cover
Food & Wine
A New Exhibition from Wayne Thiebaud, America's Renowned Pastry Still-Life Painter September 30, 2014
"Wayne Thiebaud: Memory Mountains"
Huffington Post
Wayne Thiebaud: Memory Mountains November 14, 2013