Wayne Thiebaud: Paintings and Pastels

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and pastels by Wayne Thiebaud. The exhibition will open on Wednesday, May 23rd, and will run through Saturday, July 7th. An opening reception will be held on May 23rd, from 5:30-7:30 pm. In addition, an illustrated catalog will be published to coincide with the exhibition. Paintings and Pastels highlights some of Thiebaud's most significant work from throughout his sixty year career. Many of the works on view have been in private collections and have rarely been exhibited. The exhibition consists of approximately thirty examples of Thiebaud's oeuvre, including a number of quintessential dessert and object still life works, as well as several paintings of the Sacramento delta and San Francisco cityscapes, spanning from the early 1960s through the late 2000s. The works included in this exhibition represent the qualities for which Thiebaud is most known-his use of heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows that are characteristic of advertisements. 

Wayne Thiebaud was born on November 15, 1920 in Mesa, Arizona. From 1942 to 1945, Thiebaud served in the Air Force, assigned to the Special Services Department as an artist and cartoonist, and eventually transferred to the First Air Force Motion Picture Unit, commanded by Ronald Reagan. From 1949 to 1950, Thiebaud studied at the San Jose State University and from 1950 to 1953 at the California State University in Sacramento. He had his first solo exhibition at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento. Thiebaud lectured at the Art Department of the Sacramento City College until 1959, when he became a professor at the University of California in Davis. 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 [1]. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first Pop Art exhibitions in America. On October 14, 1994 he was presented with the National Medal of Arts. His paintings are in the collections of most major museums in the United States including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Thiebaud lives and works in Sacramento, California.