Wayne Thiebaud

Allan Stone Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

California, Stanford Art Museum; New York, Allan Stone Gallery; Saint Joseph, Albrecht Gallery of Fine Arts, Figures: Wayne Thiebaud, September 1965 - April 1966
Cleveland Museum of Art, Popular Images and Sensibility, July - September 1968
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Newport, California, Newport Harbor Art Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Columbus Museum of Art; Kansas City, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Wayne Thiebaud, September 1985- November 1986
New York, Allan Stone Gallery, Wayne Thiebaud: The Figure, April -  May 2008, cat. no. 29, p. 29, illustrated in color

This painting is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is framed in a wood strip frame with silver facing.
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.

A profoundly subtle work, Wayne Thiebaud's Standing Man is strikingly minimal in composition—a man candidly positioned before artist and viewer coveys Thiebaud's deceptively simple, yet ambitious attempt to honestly depict the model. Indeed, as a continuation of his celebrated still life paintings, Thiebaud's figurative practice is a conscious exercise in objective study and rendering. Standing Man nonetheless displays deep complexity, as the subject's isolated and introspective disposition defies objectivity, exposing the inevitable psychological dimension of portraiture.

In 1962, when the Allan Stone Gallery staged Thiebaud's successful debut solo show in New York, the artist's portrayal of consumer products— primarily cakes and pies—initially linked his oeuvre with the concurrent Pop Art movement. Thiebaud's approach to realism, however, is differentiated by his thick and expressive application of paint, and the artist and his dealer were keen to avoid any limitation of Thiebaud's work within a single art genre or movement.  As a result, Thiebaud decisively switched subject matter the following year. Thiebaud's ensuing attempt to grapple with the human figure at once diversified the content of his work and challenged the painter to objectively represent the human form.

Painted in 1964, Standing Man is demonstrative of Thiebaud's early commitment to formal investigation of the figure. The neutralized setting and straightforward composition, along with the intensity of a single light source, serve to focus the viewer's attention solely on the man presented. Thiebaud has said, "I don't make a lot of distinction between things like landscape or figure painting, because to me the problems are inherently the same—lighting, color, structure and so on—certainly traditional and ordinary problems." (Exh. Cat., San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wayne Thiebaud, 1985, p. 41). Here then, Thiebaud remains true to his interests: Standing Man is precisely executed, without fanfare, in browns, blacks, yellows and permeating white, so as to factually represent the man as he is.

Exemplary of Thiebaud's most striking figures, Standing Man has been included in a number of surveys of the artist's work since its debut at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1966. Writing on the occasion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's 1985 exhibition of Thiebaud's work, curator Karen Tsujimoto insightfully remarked, "Upon viewing [Thiebaud's] enigmatic figures, we are prompted to question their meaning and, in the process, are made much more aware of our own solitary existence. It is our life alone that imbues these figures with meaning." (Ibid., p. 106).