Wayne Thiebaud

The University Art Museum collection boasts four Wayne Thiebaud prints, which include an early Artist’s Proof. These prints are the basis for the permanent collection exhibition that will feature all the UAM Thiebaud works as well as twenty-two Thiebaud prints borrowed from the University Library Gallery of Cal-State Sacramento.

Thiebaud is a quintessential California artist with roots in Long Beach who became world-renowned for his sensuous use of color to depict everyday objects and landscapes. Though most closely associated with Pop Art and California Realism, his unique style does not actively seek inclusion in the rhetoric of art history – the honesty and intimacy of his works make them immediately accessible, but they also offer up a technical rigor and talent that has seduced art critics for decades.

The Prints in Process exhibition will focus on Thiebaud’s creative process, featuring not only print progressions, but also variations on certain themes where his exploration of shape and subject are examined.

Exhibition overview from the museum website

Whether or not you go,  Wayne Thiebaud  is a comprehensive monograph of more than 200 illustrations, including not only his heavily pigmented still lifes of cakes, pies, and candies, but also his broader range, from vibrant landscapes to portraits of solitary figures.

"American artist Wayne Thiebaud is famed for his brightly colored canvases of cakes, diner pies, pastries, ice cream cones, candy and brightly colored gumball machines. . . Often aligned with the Pop Art movement of the '60s with which he came of age as an artist, Thiebaud has also painted lipsticks, women's shoes and toys in the same simple but ideal manner, as if they were Platonic essences. Whether still lifes or landscapes, Thiebaud's paintings are akin to visual Prozac; you simply cannot be in a bad mood looking at them."  KANSAS CITY MAGAZINE