American, b. November 15, 1920 — d. December 25, 2021
Lived and worked in Sacramento, California

Wayne Thiebaud is California’s POP art master. His characteristic work displays consumer objects, particularly food such as pies and cakes as they are seen in store windows. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects. Well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements (and one might say California Light) are almost always included. Objects are simplified into basic units but appear varied using seemingly minimal means.

As with many artists from the beginning of the POP art era in the early 1960s, Wayne Thiebaud had underpinnings in the commercial art world, from having been a high school summer apprentice in the animation department of Walt Disney Studios to serving as an artist and cartoonist in the Air Force during World War II.

Wayne Thiebaud’s artworks are highly regarded internationally, with paintings, drawings and prints in almost every major art museum collection in the world. His work is also highly sought after by individual art collectors.

Delights Portfolio

17 Aquatint, Drypoint and Etchings:
Lunch, Fish, Banana Splits, Cherry Stand, Bacon and Eggs, Double Deckers, Lunch Counter, Dispensers, Gum Machine, Lemon Meringue, Suckers, Candied Apples, Cake Window, Club Sandwich, Pies, Delicatessen, and Olives

“I love doing prints,” professed acclaimed artist Wayne Thiebaud in 1997 during a talk at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Thiebaud reminisced that his first etchings were made by “taking a piece of plastic, scratching on it and then running it through an old-fashioned washing machine wringer.” Thiebaud’s “scratches” have since grown into sophisticated etchings that explore the artist’s signature imagery on paper. The seventeen etchings of Delights showcase a mastery of medium and mark an important achievement in the artist’s oeuvre. Formatted as a book, inherent to half the edition, Delights is an homage to life’s simple pleasures. The jaunty gumball machine, hearty diner breakfast, and immaculate slice of cake depicted in these pages appear just like their namesake, total delights.

Printed in 1964 and published in 1965, Delights was an early endeavor for Crown Point Press and its founder, master printer Kathan Brown. After seeing an exhibition of Thiebaud’s paintings in San Francisco, not knowing the artist, Brown invited him to her printshop to make an artist’s book. There, Thiebaud delved into etchings that explored the iconography of his paintings through a new medium. Delights marked the beginning of a more than 50-year printmaking partnership for Thiebaud at Crown Point Press where he has created over 100 different images.

With an emphasis on edges and negative space, Thiebaud's prints appeal to the eye through rudimentary forms. The stark contrast of black ink on white paper follows the traditional arc of Thiebaud’s graphic works. The fine lines, spare in certain areas and brimming with cross-hatched details in others, are at first direct, later revealing immense depth and solid form. The structure of Thiebaud’s images speaks to his ability to construct, in great detail, the candid compositions of our daily lives.

Thiebaud created the seventeen etchings for Delights to handsomely document and enhance the appreciation of our existence. “We are hesitant to make our own life special ... set our still lifes aside,” wrote Thiebaud in Is a Lollipop Tree Worth Painting, San Francisco Chronicle, 1962. “If we sentimentalize or adopt a posture more polite than our own,” he continued, “we are not having a real look at ourselves for what we are.”