Celebrated ‘everyday’ painter Wayne Thiebaud dead at 101

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Wayne Thiebaud, an internationally known artist known for his richly textured paintings of everyday, ordinary objects, died Saturday. He was 101.

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His death was confirmed by his New York-based gallery, Acquavella, The New York Times reported. Thiebaud died at his residence in Sacramento, California, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Acquavella has held four exhibitions of Thiebaud’s work and said the artist had “still spent most days in the studio” despite his age, KCRA-TV reported.

Thiebaud was born on Nov. 15, 1920, in Mesa, Arizona, according to the Times. His maternal grandmother was one of the original Mormon settlers in Utah during the mid-19th century. His father, an inventor, moved his family to Long Beach, California, when Thiebaud was an infant, the newspaper report. The Great Depression forced the family to move back to Utah.

He studied commercial art in high school and found odd jobs as a sign painter and cartoonist, the Times reported. He worked briefly as an apprentice animator at the Disney studios, training himself to draw Popeye with both hands at the same time -- which helped him get the job. He also created movie poster illustrations.

Thiebaud began by painting expressionistic pictures, but he never lost respect for commercial art, according to the newspaper.

He would ultimately owe debts to Krazy Kat and Mickey Mouse, to Edward Hopper and Joaquín Sorolla, the turn-of-the-century Spanish academic painter, and to artist Willem de Kooning.

Thiebaud would say he admired how de Kooning had found a way to “light a picture from within.”

Thiebaud was 31 when he had his first one-man exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, The Bee reported.

“Thiebaud’s work is a combination of the real and the imagined, the nostalgic and the modern,” Scott A. Shields, author of the book “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” and Crocker‘s chief curator and associate director, told the newspaper in 2019. “These dichotomies are part of what give his work its lasting appeal.”

The Crocker Art Museum has held a Thiebaud exhibition each decade since hosting his first solo show, KCRA reported. Last year the museum celebrated his 100th birthday by featuring 100 works that spanned his career.

“Paintings are not made to be exciting,” Thiebaud told Sactown Magazine in a preview ahead of that exhibition. “They’re quiet little visual examples of poetry. So you can’t expect much excitement, but you can expect, I hope, a display of personal feelings.”

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