"Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting," a survey of more than one hundred twenty works drawn from the oeuvre of the celebrated painter will be showing at the San Jose Museum of Art through July 4, 2010. Thiebaud is best known for his vibrantly colored and stylized paintings of bakeries and delicatessens. In recent years, he has also become known for paintings of San Francisco cityscapes, beach scenes and Northern California California landscapes. A variety of these paintings will be on display along with prominent drawings and rarely seen figurative works spanning his career.
His work has been categorized as Pop Art, California Pop, and California Realism amongst others, but his singular style cannot be restricted to any one category. With his penchant for dazzling sunlight and high-keyed color, and a gift for painterly, sensuous handling of oils and other media, his paintings link high art with popular culture.
Born in Arizona and raised in Long Beach, Wayne Thiebaud took up drawing as a young child and eventually apprenticed in the animation department of Walt Disney Studios. He subsequently worked odd jobs as a sign painter, cartoonist, and illustrator after high school. From 1942-45 Thiebaud served in the U.S. Army Air Force in Special Services where he created a newspaper cartoon strip and worked on murals, photography, and map projects. He received his B.A. and M.A. from to California State College in Sacramento.
In 1960 he began teaching at the University of California, Davis, where he has remained on the faculty ever since (as Professor Emeritus since 1990). In 1962 his works were exhibited in the groundbreaking exhibition New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum, now the Norton Simon Museum. One of the first Pop Art exhibitions in America, the exhibition also included Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Dine.
His work continued to be included in exhibitions and two large-scale retrospectives of his work that traveled nationally were organized in 1985 and 2000.
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