WAYNE THIEBAUD

(1920-2021)

Pie a la Mode

Footnotes

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Provenance
Private collection, Sacramento.
Acquired by descent from the above by the present owner.

Exhibited
Sacramento, Artists Cooperative Gallery, Wayne Thiebaud, May 19 - June 15, 1961.
San Francisco, Art Unlimited, An Exhibition of Recent Works by Thiebaud, November 30 - December 20, 1961.
San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, An Exhibition of Paintings by Wayne Thiebaud, July 10 - August 10, 1962.
Pasadena, Pasadena Art Museum, New Painting of Common Objects, September 25 - October 19, 1962.
Sacramento, Sacramento State College, Alumni Exhibit, January - February 1963.

Literature
Ogleby, John C., "Art Views: Coffee Cups and Pies Become Artist's Models", The Sacramento Bee, May 28, 1961, p. L4.
W. Hopps, "Wayne Thiebaud: de Young Museum," Artforum, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1962, p. 43-45.
Welch, Heloise, "Art in Review: Avant-Garde Styles Contrasted," Independent Star-News, October 7, 1962, p. 2.
Ogleby, John C., "Art Views: Zowie! Here Comes Superman: First Rate Alumni Show Includes Curious Oils," The Sacramento Bee, January 27, 1963, p. L8.
R. Teagle, Wayne Thiebaud: 1958-1968, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis: The University of California Press, 2018, p. 12, 156.



Wayne Thiebaud's legacy resounds as one of the great contributions to Pop Art and post-war American painting. Most famous for his iconic canvases of confections, Thiebaud's inimitable style synthesized gestural surfaces with illustrative precision. Through his paintings, he intimately reflected on the sugar-sweet banality of consumer culture, capturing seemingly austere images of plated desserts with tight flourishes of color and brushwork that exude a playful energy.

Pie a la Mode, painted in 1961, is one of Thiebaud's most important paintings of the 1960s, marking the beginning of this career-defining passage of work and one year before his representation by Allan Stone Gallery in 1962. It was in this same year that Pie a la Mode was included in the seminal exhibition New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum, curated by Walter Hopps – an exhibition credited as the first museum survey of American Pop Art. The quality and prestige of the present work is without question, therefore, as one of the foundational works for the movement that would come to define the Postmodern period.

The early 1960s launched Thiebaud onto the global stage, cementing his star power and enduring artistic importance. A sumptuous marriage of the ideology of Pop and painterly Realism, Pie a la Mode demonstrates Thiebaud's masterful exploration of light and color, capturing the small delights of our lived experiences.

While conventionality and reproducibility were fundamental tenets of Pop Art and its subjects, in the present work the singular subject speaks to the individual shaped by mass media and consumerism that Pop sought to explore. Like Edward Hopper's enigmatic Nighthawks, Pie a la Mode captures a moment of serenity and timelessness that aches with quiet isolation. A significant influence on Thiebaud, Hopper used light and shadow to contemplate scenes of everyday life and a distinctly American sensibility. As Thiebaud articulates, "Hopper would make a lot of different drawings from different places and then put them together almost like a stage set [...] That prompted me to try to take drawings and memories back into the studio" (Janet Riley, "Interview: The Legendary Wayne Thiebaud", Nob Hill Gazette, 1 May 2017). Similarly, Thiebaud created stages for which his confections assumed main character positions, embodying whimsical and playful compositions undercurrents of American culture.

It was in this pivotal moment in the early 1960s that Thiebaud conjured images and compositions from childhood recollections. That sense of nostalgia is evident in Pie a la Mode, where the melancholy background and golden hour foreground set the perfect stage for the multifaceted sensations associated with sentimentality, brought together by a single piece of pie surrounded by a halo of rich impasto. The melting ice cream underscores this sentiment, emphasizing a fleeting moment of delight. Though void of context, the image is imbued with a sense of specificity which each viewer fuels with their own perspective and memories.

Included in the first exhibition of Pop Art in America, New Painting of Common Objects, Pie a la Mode's status as a work of transcendent significance was affirmed. Shown alongside seven titans of his generation including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Ed Ruscha, Thiebaud's unique contributions to the Post-War period were cemented by his inclusion in this monumental exhibition that brought critical acclaim to Pop Art. Prior to New Painting of Common Objects, Pie a la Mode was included in Thiebaud's first major institutional exhibition at the de Young, yet another essential exhibition in the timeline of Thiebaud's ascent to greatness. Currently, Thiebaud's legacy remains as resonant as ever with a major exhibition, Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art, currently on view through August 2025 at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.