Wayne Thiebaud

Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Murray Kaplan, New York (acquired from the above in 1964)
Private Collection, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

California, Pasadena Art Museum, Wayne Thiebaud, February – March 1968, cat. no. 36
Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hayden Gallery, Contemporary Views of Man, September – October 1971

This work is in very good condition. Please refer to the following condition report prepared by Amann + EstabrookConservation Associates.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In 1963, Wayne Thiebaud decisively digressed from the confectionary concerns of the years prior and turned his creative focus to the formalist concerns of the human figure. He undoubtedly realized the weight of this undertaking, armed with a conviction that an artist's capacity to handle the figure served as a barometer for an artist's very ability once stating, "I think it's the most important study there is and the most challenging and the most difficult." (Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wayne Thiebaud, p. 103). Elusive to the market in light of the few figurative works produced still in private hands, Supine Woman, renders a young woman whose physical carriage conveys a literality that at once embraces the austerity and simplicity, aspects at the fundamental heart of Modernism. He poignantly directs the viewer's attention to the woman's inscrutable yet focused expression through a calculated absence of a visual narrative, forcing the viewer to engage with her embedded supine psychology.

A grand corollary to Thiebaud's preoccupation with the formalist concerns of the picture plane and perspective is his longstanding affair with color. His impossible signature blue grey shadows endow his figure with depth, conferring a perspectival edict to his formalist and modernist visual declaration. Her dress mimics the same painterly achromatic hue that frames her, and yet the suggestion of flesh and life are palpable in her rose hued face and extended legs and hands. It is not Thiebaud's intention to present the viewer with an obvious emotional state, and the painting is in fact a psychological tome; a visual dissertation opulently painted and calculated to the point of physically splendid and mesmerizing aesthetic psychosis.