Wayne Thiebaud - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 15, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco

  • Exhibited

    San Francisco, Campbell-Thiebaud, Wayne Thiebaud: Cityscapes, November 9 - December 18, 1993

  • Literature

    Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery, ed., Wayne Thiebaud: Cityscapes, San Francisco, 1993, n.p. (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    Although Wayne Thiebaud is perhaps best known for his lusciously impastoed still lifes of candy counters, cakes and ice cream cones, he is also an accomplished landscape artist, imagining topographies that are both familiar and fantastic. Whether painting the San Francisco cityscapes or the Sacramento River Delta, Thiebaud’s images draw from diverse sources in the rich art historical tradition of landscape – a composite of different points of view, different times, different memories, all recorded in his witty California vernacular. J.L.T. “WayneThiebaud,” Picasso to Thiebaud – Modern and Contemporary Art from the Collections of Stanford University Alumni and Friends, 2004, p. 52
    Cat and Traffic captures the unique San Francisco landscape using Thiebaud’s renowned compositional talent and grasp of appealing colors. Thiebaud focuses on the basic shapes of urban scenery, the high arch of the interstate in the distance, the long shadow of the high-rise building, the corner of the apartment balcony overlooking it all. Images of city life are a natural extension of the pop imageryThiebaud was closely associated with in the 1960s. During this era,Thiebaud produced a series of paintings of consumer goods found in storefront windows – icons of the new American middle-class lifestyle. Much like his contemporaries – Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Ruscha –Thiebaud’s work exhibites a curiosity about popular culture, a relatively new phenomenon in the early post-war years.Theibaud’s shift away from the serial repetition of his Pop iconography results in a studied exploration of the juxtaposition between city life and nature, a celebration of modern civilization.Thiebaud’s artistic talents lie in his ability to construct tightly composed images that guide the viewer’s eye through the image. Like a storyteller,Thiebaud’s brushstrokes carefully narrate the scene, evoking a dialogue throughout the pictoral space.
    The artist’s technique, mimicking that of his mentor Edward Hopper, involved numerous preliminary sketches in situ and from memory, which resulted in a scene that is the product of both real-life and fantasy. Thiebaud says of his landscapes: “These drawings seemed to offer more the kind of visual and physical feeling that was closer to the idea of San Francisco. So, when I returned to painting again, the city itself looked more like the composite drawings I had been making. And the dialogue between what was there and what was made up become the basis of the entire series. WayneTheiband taken from R.Wollheim, Wayne Theiband: Cityscapes, San Francisco, 1993, n.p.

144

Cat and Traffic

1993
Acrylic on canvas
15 3/4 x 20 in. (40 x 50.8 cm)
Signed and dated “Thiebaud 93” upper left; furthersigned anddated "Thiebaud 1993" on the reverse; furtherdated and inscribed on the stretcher`"CAT AND TRAFFIC" 1993 Acrylic/Canvas 16x20"' on the reverse upper stretcher.

Estimate
$800,000 - 1,200,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

15 May 2008, 7pm
New York