Morton Wayne Thiebaud

We authenticate, certify, issue certificates of authenticity (COA), appraise the value and broker the sale of paintings, drawings, and prints by Morton Wayne Thiebaud.

American

Born in 1920, Mesa, Arizona.

Died in 2021, in Sacramento, California, aged 101.

He spent most of his life in California, including in San José and Sacramento. He also lived in New York in the 1940s.

Typical subject matter:

He typically painted still lifes of everyday, mass consumption objects, including food items – cakes and slices, scoops of ice cream either in cups or cones, pastries, hot dogs, donuts – and other products belonging to popular culture – lipsticks, spray paint cans, stiletto heels, among others.

He also extensively painted landscapes, mostly from aerial views, as well as figures of women and men dressed in contemporary fashion, and popular characters, such as Mickey.

Furthermore, he started his career as a graphic designer and a cartoonist in California and New York, from 1938 to 1949.

Typical style:

He is renowned as a Pop artist and is regarded as one of the most influential American artists of his century. He used bright colours and paint impasto to a certain extent. In his paintings, drawings, and prints, he kept from his early-career advertising images the sharp and clear cast shadows, as well as a shaded line outlining the contours of the depicted objects. A large part of his drawings and prints differs from his vividly coloured works in being made of a cameo of black and grey.

His late-career paintings moved towards a certain hyperrealism.

Typical material and media:

For his paintings, he mostly worked in oil on canvas.

For his drawings, he used graphite, pastel, colour crayons, and ink on paper.

He has also extensively worked in etching, linoleum cut, screenprint, and lithograph on paper, often originally gathered as series in albums.

If you own a painting, a drawing, or a print by or attributed to Wayne Thiebaud, we would like to learn about it. Please send us photos or contact us at [email protected]. You will generally receive a response within 24 hours.