Delectable pastries. A still life of a deli counter. A chorus line of red, pink and orange lipsticks. Pastel city-scapes and landscapes. Wayne Thiebaud's colorful depictions of everyday life made him one of America's most beloved painters. Thiebaud died at his home in Sacramento on Saturday. He was 101 years old.
His death was announced by his gallery, Acquavella.
"It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of a truly remarkable man, Wayne Thiebaud," the gallery said in a statement. "An American icon, Wayne led his life with passion and determination, inspired by his love for teaching, tennis, and above all, making art. Even at 101 years old, he still spent most days in the studio, driven by, as he described with his characteristic humility, 'this almost neurotic fixation of trying to learn to paint.'"
Born in Mesa, Ariz. and raised in southern California, Thiebaud was a lover of comic strips, cartoons and clowns in his early years. He apprenticed as an animator for Walt Disney Studios before serving in the Army during World War II.
Thiebaud's work has been exhibited in major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Smithsonian. The artist, who once used the phrase "brush dances" to describe his work to NPR, was also a lifelong professor, first at Sacramento Junior College and then the University of California, Davis.
A tireless student of painting himself, Thiebaud spoke to NPR in 2001 about why the experience of looking at art was so meaningful to him.
"You are able to enter the world of Van Gogh or enter the world of these painters who offer us alternate worlds," he said. "They are not God's world, they are man's world. And they may be fictions, but they're also powerful statements about the sort of astounding capacity of the human mind."
Thiebaud's work is currently the subject of a traveling retrospective organized by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Calif. Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings is on view at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas through Jan. 16, 2022.
Thiebaud's second wife Betty Jean died in 2015. His son Paul died in 2010. He is survived by two daughters, a son and six grandchildren.
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