Wayne Thiebaud Nov. 15, 1920-?

Wayne Thiebaud He was an American painter most famous for his cakes and pastries.

He is associated with the Pop Art movement because of his interest in objects of everyday life. Thiebaud uses heavy paint and exaggerated colors to illustrate his subjects and strong shadows are almost always included in his work.

Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona. His family moved to California when he was six months old. One summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Pictures at the Walt Disney Studio making drawings of Goofy, Pinnocchio, and Jimminy Cricket making $14 a week. From 1938 to 1949, he worked as a cartoonist and designer in California and New York. He served as an artist in the United States Air Force from

In 1960, he became assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, where he remained through the 1970s and influenced numerous art students. On a leave of absence, he spent time in New York where he became friends with other Pop Artists and was much influenced by them. During this time, he began a series of very small paintings based on images of food displayed in windows, and he focused on their basic shapes.

Returning to California, he pursued this subject matter and style, focusing on triangles, circles, squares, etc.

In 1962 Thiebaud's work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Jim Dine, in the historically important and ground-breaking show"New Painting of Common Objects," at the Pasadena Art Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first Pop Art exhibitions in America. These painters were part of a new movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked America and the art world and changed art forever.Pop Art

It’s hard to imagine that pictures of everyday things could shock the art world, but it had never been done before.

Here are a few more of his artworks: