Opening at The Courtauld Gallery on 10 October, The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life is the first-ever museum exhibition in the UK dedicated to celebrated modern American artist Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021).
Acknowledged as one of the most original American artists of the 20th century, Thiebaud developed a unique style of painting to express his vision of post-war American culture through its everyday objects.
The exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery focuses on Thiebaud’s works of the 1960s that made his reputation and brings together some of the greatest paintings the artist produced at this time – captivating depictions of quintessential modern American subjects, from cherry pies, hot dogs and candy counters to gumball dispensers and pinball machines. With these works, Thiebaud recast the genre of still life for the modern era.
Thiebaud lived and worked most of his life in Sacramento, California, and was a longstanding teacher at nearby University of California, Davis. In the 1940s and 1950s, before becoming a painter, he worked as an illustrator, cartoonist and art director, including a summer spent in the animation department of Walt Disney Studios and a role as a graphic designer for the US army as part of his military service during the Second World War.
In 1956, Thiebaud travelled to New York to meet the avant-garde artists working there. Willem de Kooning was especially inspirational and encouraged him to find his own voice and subjects as a modern painter. Returning to Sacramento, he began painting commonplace objects of American life, largely from memory, and soon crystallised his unique approach, isolating his richly painted subjects against spare backgrounds.
In 1961, he took this group of modern still lifes to New York looking for a gallery to show them. Having faced rejection from most, he made a last stop at a gallery run by a young dealer, Allan Stone, who took him on. The following year, Thiebaud staged his first solo show at the Allan Stone Gallery, which was an overnight success, propelling him into the limelight. Important collectors and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, purchased works and the exhibition sold out. From there, Thiebaud would go on to become one of the major figures of 20th-century American art.
In 1962 Thiebaud was featured, alongside artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, in two historic shows that established the Pop Art movement. Although his work coincided with Pop Art, Thiebaud never considered himself part of the movement. Rather than being rooted in advertising graphics, methods of mass reproduction, and concerned with flat, print-like surfaces, Thiebaud’s work is painterly almost to the point of exaggeration. He exploited the physical properties of paint to create an intense and captivating expression of his chosen subjects.
The exhibition features rarely lent works from major museums and private collections in the United States. Highlights include Thiebaud’s epic painting Cakes, lent for the first time outside the US by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Four Pinball Machines, one of his most significant works in a private collection. Other major loans include works from the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, among others. The exhibition also benefits from generous loans from the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation in Sacramento.
For further information: courtauld.ac.uk
Image: Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes,1963, Oil on canvas,152.4 x 182.9cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.© Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
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