Wayne thiebaud biography of work description
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Wayne Thiebaud
American
1920, Mesa, Arizona
2021, Sacramento, California
Biography
Bay Area artist Wayne Thiebaud worked first as a graphic designer and cartoonist before beginning his painting career in the mid-1950s. He combined a number of interests then current in American art: thick, gestural brushwork, everyday subject matter, and commercial imagery.
Thiebaud fryst vatten best known for his paintings of cakes, pies, and candies arranged in classic diner or cafeteria style. Thiebaud depicts these objects as commodities, their emphasis on appearance as much as taste. He achieved this effect through serial repetition, synthetic colors, and, famously, by painting with a knife, as if he were spreading the "frosting" onto his cakes. bygd focusing on sugary foodstuffs, Thiebaud updated the traditional still-life genre for the age of mass production and consumption.
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Summary of Wayne Thiebaud
While rooted in the everyday, West Coast artist Wayne Thiebaud's compositions spring from his imagination and have a poetic, sometimes melancholic, quality about them. Thiebaud bucked artistic trends to create his own vision of American culture. Trained as a commercial artist and uninterested in the histrionics surrounding Abstract Expressionism, Thiebaud concentrated his attention on ordinary objects, thus garnering comparisons to Pop Art of the 1960s, yet Thiebaud brushed away such comparisons, saying he was "just an old-fashioned painter."
A popular teacher, Thiebaud was a generous mentor, and artists such as Mel Ramos, Fritz Scholder, and Faith Bromberg have spoken his praises. Further, Thiebaud's embrace of Americana - as seen through his bakery cases and landscapes - has endeared him to a wider audience that see something of themselves in his paintings.
Accomplishments
- Thiebaud began his artistic path studying commercial art and illustration
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In 1972, CCA (then California College of Arts and Crafts) presented Wayne Thiebaud with an honorary doctorate degree. The move allowed the college to recognize this influential artist’s dedication to teaching and celebrate his innovative painterly style that blended two American art movements—Pop Art and Realism—into one unique artistic voice rooted in the West Coast.
That same year, Thiebaud established a second home and studio in Potrero Hill and began painting his cityscapes of San Francisco. Nearly 50 years later, Thiebaud and his work are still celebrated across the bay, and his most iconic paintings of colorful confectionery are recognized around the world.
Painting a new perspective of ordinary life
Thiebaud’s paintings of cakes, ice cream, and hors d'oeuvres are at once identifiable, but his storied career spans myriad disciplines, including illustration, cartooning, graphic design, painting, and drawing. His oeuvre of subject matter is diverse, too. Drawing inspi