UV - Artist Focus (Lesson)

Artist Focus: Wayne Thiebaud

Learning from a master artist has been practiced for centuries by art students. For this unit, we will look at a master of values and of confectionary treats. Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced T-Bow) is a pop artist and extraordinary painter of cupcakes, cakes, donuts, and many more treats. He was born in Mesa, Arizona in 1920. 

Thiebaud, Wayne. Cake Rows, 1961. 

Budding Artist

Wayne Thiebaud showed an interest in the arts, especially the theater, during his early years in Long Beach, California. As a young man, he worked at various jobs in order to develop his artistic skills, including as a cartoonist, a show-card letterer, and a stage technician.

Thiebaud, Wayne. Pies, 1961.

Military Service & Education

Thiebaud served in the United States Air Force during World War II and was assigned to Special Services. For most of his tour, he edited training films and photographed beauty contests and award ceremonies. After his release from these duties in 1945, Thiebaud worked as a commercial artist for several years before making a commitment to a career in painting. He began his formal artistic studies at San Jose State University, then transferred to California State University at Sacramento, where he finished both his B.A. and M.A. in studio art and art education.

Thiebaud, Wayne. Suckers. 1970.

Choosing His Subject Matter

By 1960 Thiebaud had developed a distinctive visual vocabulary centered around food. His work incorporated familiar items that are often regarded, and sometimes disdained, as popular symbols of mass consumption in American society. When his paintings of pies, hot dogs, and gumball machines were first exhibited in 1962, they received wide critical acclaim and were considered indictments of America's shallow consumer culture. Yet Thiebaud has always disputed this interpretation, maintaining that his subjects are born of nostalgia rather than contempt.

Thiebaud, Wayne. Cakes, No.1. 1937.

Master Draftsman

Best known for his luscious paintings of pies and ice-cream cones, California artist Wayne Thiebaud has been an avid and prolific draftsman since he began his career as an illustrator and cartoonist. Featuring subjects that range from deli counters and isolated figures to dramatic views of San Francisco’s plunging streets, Thiebaud’s drawings invariably endow the most banal, everyday scenes with a sense of poetry and nostalgia.

Thiebaud, Wayne. Four Ice Cream Cones. 1949.

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