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Morton Wayne Thiebaud
American, born 1920
Wayne Thiebaud's family moved to Long Beach, California when he was six months old. Rodolph Thiebaud, Wayne's Grandfather, also moved from Arizona to Los Angeles California. During the Depression Morton Justi and Alice Thiebaud with family moved to Utah to try farming about 1929. Morton Justi Thiebaud returned with his family to Long Beach, California in 1933 when he found work cleaning up after the earthquake of 1933. In 1935, Wayne Theibaud attended Long Beach Poly Tech High School. He began drawing and Cartooning. One summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Pictures Walt Disney Studio making 'in-betweeners' of Goofy, Pinocchio, and Jiminy 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 First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces from 1942-45.
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 bonolectures 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 artist 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), 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 . 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.
One of Thiebaud's successful students from Sacramento City College was renowned artist, Fritz Scholder (1937–2005), who went on to become a major influence in the direction of American Indian art through his instruction at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1964–1969). Another successful student is Mel Ramos, famous painter of art nudes and retired professor of art at California State University, East Bay, who considers Thiebaud to be his mentor.
On October 14, 1994, he was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.
Wayne Thiebaud has been married twice. With his first wife, Patricia Patterson, he produced two children, one of whom is the model and writer Twinka Thiebaud. With his second wife, Betty Jean Carr, he had a son, Paul LeBaron Thiebaud, who later became an art dealer. He also adopted Betty's son, Matthew.
Submitted by Barbara Smith
Askart Archives
A painter of pop-art realism combined with a great respect for traditional methods and subject matter, Wayne Thiebaud is one of the most prominent of the Bay Area painters in California in the latter part of the 20th century. His reputation spread far beyond his own state.
In his painting, he focuses on the commonplace in a way that suggests irony and objective distance from his subjects. He also makes a point of keeping an independent distance from the New York art scene.
He was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920, and for one summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Studio and then studied at an Los Angeles trade school the next summer. He earned a degree from Sacramento State College in 1941. From 1938 to 1949, he worked as a cartoonist and designer in California and New York and served as an artist in the United States Army.
In 1950, at the age of thirty, he enrolled in Sacramento State where he earned a Master's Degree in 1952 and 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 artist students. However, he did not have much following among Conceptualists because of his adherence to basically traditional disciplines, emphasis on hard work rather than creativity, and love of realism.
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 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.
Wayne Thiebaud had his first solo show in April 1962 in New York City at the Allan Stone Gallery. His first solo museum show was mounted in San Francisco at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in July 1962, and that same year in October, he was included in the group show, New Realists, at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
In 1963, he turned increasingly to figure painting, wooden and rigid with each detail sharply emphasized; in 1967 his work was shown at the Biennale Internationale, and in 1985, he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
From June to September 3, 2001, The California Palace of the Legion of Honor held a special 80th birthday commemorative exhibition titled: Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective.
Sources:
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Tsujuimoto, Karen. Wayne Thiebaud. San Franciso Museum of Modern Art. Exhibition Catalogue 1985.
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