WAYNE THIEBAUD | NUDE SEATED, CLOSED EYES

Many of Thiebaud’s drawings have a personal quality that contrasts strongly with the sense of detachment the paintings appear to possess. Yet upon studying these intimate works, one feels a closeness, almost a familiarity and affection for the subjects. Drawing, as Thiebaud has written is a way “to test what one can know about the look of such things as grace, sensuality, affectation, tension, repose, ineffableness, and those mysterious characteristics which remain between a question and an answer.” Although many of these drawings possess a quickness of line reminiscent of preliminary sketches, they are, nonetheless, able to stand as works complete in themselves. As Thiebaud himself asserts: “ The figures have been standing, posing, fighting, loving and what I’m interested in, really, is the figure that is about to do something, or has done something, or is doing nothing, and, with that sort of centering device, try to figure out what can be revealed, not only to people, but to myself.” 

Wayne Thiebaud was born in 1920 in Mesa, Arizona. From 1938-1949 he was a cartoonist and designer in California and New York. He also served as an artist in the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces from 1942-1945. Thiebaud attended San Jose State College (now San Jose State University) followed by Sacramento State College (now California State University, Sacramento), where he received his BA in 1951 and his MA in 1952. For over fifty years, Thiebaud has been a fixture of American Art, the recipient of numerous awards, with highlights including the 1994 National Medal of Arts, given by the then President Clinton, a 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Design, and a 2007 Bay Area Treasure Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Thiebaud has been honored with gallery and museum exhibitions almost every year since 1960, highlighted by a 1985 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a 2001 retrospective that traveled from the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Allan Stone began representing Wayne Thiebaud in 1962, just as he began to develop his most admired themes. Over the years he rose from relative obscurity as a miscategorized California Pop artist to one of the most celebrated painters of the twentieth century. Thiebaud lives and works in Sacramento, California.