Wayne Thiebaud: Artist’s Choice

In two side-by-side exhibitions, Northern California–based artist Wayne Thiebaud’s own work is featured alongside paintings by others that he personally selected from SFMOMA’s collection.

Thiebaud (b. 1920) first visited SFMOMA in 1942, when he was just 22 years old, and has had a close relationship with the museum ever since. For Wayne Thiebaud: Artist’s Choice, he delved deep into the museum’s storage vault. His choices include both old friends and new discoveries by European Modernists Henri Matisse and Joan Miró, American painters George Ault and Georgia O’Keeffe, California peers Richard Diebenkorn and John McLaughlin, and more recent canvases by Katherine Porter and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The selection of works in Wayne Thiebaud: Paintings and Drawings spans 50 years of the artist’s career, from his classic still life Confections (1962) to his grand landscape Canyon Mountains (2011–12). Get a firsthand look at the creative process behind Thiebaud’s lushly painted, richly hued works, from beginning sketch to finished painting. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.      

Image:  Wayne Thiebaud, Pineapple Tray, 1972/1990/1992; oil on canvas, 30 in. x 22 in. (76.2 cm x 55.88 cm); The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York