Wayne Thiebaud

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Wayne Thiebaud
(American, b. 1920)

"Dark Cake", 1983

Woodcut printed in colors; signed in pencil; total edition of 200; on Tosa Kozo paper, with the Crown Point Press blindstamp.

15 x 17.5 in (38.2 x 44.5 cm)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Mannheim, Germany

Museums and Collections:
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art; The Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design; The San Diego Museum of Art; and countless other museums and private collections.

Wayne Thiebaud emerged as a formidable contemporary artist during the early 1960s, when Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the rest of the Pop Artists represented the avant-garde. Thiebaud embraced the clarity of this movement and would develop a similar style. Having begun his career as a commercial artist, sign painter and cartoonist, his transition to painting pies, cakes, hot dogs and other simplistic American objects was somewhat natural. However, Thiebaud's motivation for depicting these everyday objects was quite different from that of his Pop Art contemporaries.

While Warhol and his followers often satirized American consumerism in their works, a humble feeling of nostalgia and gratitude pervade Thiebaud's Pop-style works. He painted the majority of his works from memory only, in an attempt to reflect on family picnics, home cooking and other features of 'small town America. His seemingly endless lines of pastries and cafeteria foods simultaneously show our standardization and abundance of food.

In his later prints, Thiebaud moves on to capture automobiles and roadways, yet with the same geometric preoccupation. His overall compositions gradually become more structured and grid-like, as well as losing their soft palette in favor of brighter, more distinct colors. However, while his style may have evolved over his career, Thiebaud's unwaveringly favorable portrayal of "Americanism" continues to be the characteristic that separates him from his peers.