Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud is a painter best known for his colorful works depicting commonplace objects-pies, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs-as well as for his landscapes and figures. He is Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California, Davis, where he taught from 1960 to 1990. He is also a recipient of the National Medal of Arts (1994). Thiebaud started out as a commercial artist in the 1930s. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his earlier works in this style, executed during the fifties and sixties, predate the works of the classic pop artists. In 1962 Thiebaud's work was included, along with the works of Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Edward Ruscha, and Robert Dowd, in the historically important "New Painting of Common Objects," curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena). This exhibition is considered one of the first Pop Art exhibitions in America. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work. He is an elected member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and an academician of the National Academy of Design. He is a recipient of the National Arts Club's Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award, the American Academy of Design's Lifetime Achievement Award for Art, and many other prestigious prizes, including four honorary degrees. His works are on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Art Institute and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other institutions.