Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021), celebrated for vibrant still lifes of postwar American life, is showcased in his first UK museum exhibition at The Courtauld. Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life presents his iconic 1960s works, including pies, cakes, hot dogs, and gumball machines, transforming everyday objects into art.
The exhibition brings together rarely lent works from major US collections, including Cakes from the National Gallery of Art and Four Pinball Machines from a private collection, with additional loans from the Whitney, Smithsonian, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, and the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation.
Thiebaud’s still lifes blend Pop art exuberance with refined painterly technique. He had a diverse early career in illustration, cartooning, Disney animation, and military graphic design before becoming a leading Bay Area artist.
Living primarily in Sacramento, he taught at UC Davis, drawing inspiration from New York avant-garde artists, particularly Willem de Kooning. His signature approach—painting everyday objects against sparse backgrounds—was first widely recognized after his 1962 solo show at Allan Stone Gallery.
That same year, he appeared in landmark exhibitions alongside Warhol and Lichtenstein that shaped Pop Art, though his textured, painterly style distinguished him from the movement’s flat, graphic aesthetic.
The Courtauld, which holds Thiebaud’s 1963 ink drawing Cake Slices, provides rich context for his reinvention of still life, inviting comparisons with Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
Curated by Dr Karen Serres, Senior Curator of Paintings, and Dr Barnaby Wright, Deputy Head of The Courtauld Gallery and Daniel Katz Curator of 20th-Century Art, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring new scholarship on Thiebaud’s work.
Displayed in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery at The Courtauld, a related show, Wayne Thiebaud: Delights, presents his 1965 print portfolio of 17 small-scale black-and-white prints of ice cream cones, cakes, and gumball machines, highlighting his skills as a draughtsman and printmaker.
