Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life

A luscious selection of sweets, cakes and pies seduce us at this, the American painter’s first UK museum show. But was he celebrating the American dream and its values or critiquing it?

Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life, installation view, The Courtauld Gallery, 2025. Photo: © Fergus Carmichael.

The Courtauld Gallery, London
10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026

by DAVID TRIGG

“Each era produces its own still life,” wrote Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), who made his name in the early 1960s with a series of luscious paintings of desserts, sweets, hot dogs, gumball machines and other unassuming but distinctly American subjects. Twenty-one canvases from that pivotal period feature in this rich yet concise exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery which, remarkably, is the American painter’s first UK museum show. Each one is an expression of Thiebaud’s highly original response to postwar America’s burgeoning consumer culture, reflecting his belief that the trivial products of everyday life were worthy of serious painterly contemplation. With a delicate balance of wit and melancholy, Thiebaud was a unique voice in American art, and here we see how he masterfully revitalised the still life genre for the modern age.

Wayne Thiebaud, Three Machines, 1963. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 92.7cm. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Photo: Randy Dodson, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Thiebaud’s assured and adroit handling of his medium belies the fact that he was not formally trained in painting. His background was in commercial art and illustration, including an early stint in the animation department at Walt Disney Studios. The influence of these formative experiences is observed in his use of bold lines, strong colours and an ability to distil the essence of his subjects through a clarified and resolved approach to mark-making. This wasn’t always the case though. Early works such as Pinball Machine (1956) and Meat Counter (1956-59) are suffused with the mannerisms of abstract expressionism; their lively, gestural brushstrokes and loosely handled paint reflect Thiebaud’s admiration for painters such as Willem de Kooning, whom he sought out in New York in 1956 and who encouraged him to pursue quotidian subjects in which he was genuinely interested.

Wayne Thiebaud, Candy Counter, 1969. Oil on canvas, 120.7 x 91.8 cm. Private Collection © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025

De Kooning’s exhortation led to striking representational paintings such as Cold Cereal (1961), in which a full breakfast bowl sits in the emphatic purple shadow of a cereal box. Placed in a spatially ambiguous setting, the container is emblazoned with the word “FREE” – a reference to promotional giveaways but perhaps also to broader notions of social and artistic freedom in a cold war context. The elimination of extraneous detail and isolation of objects continued as Thiebaud worked to refine his style. In Candy Counter (1962), patterned lollipops, candied apples and slabs of nougat are sparsely presented on a shop counter. In contrast to later displays of abundance, such as Pie Counter and Peppermint Counter (both 1963), the composition conveys a sense of wistfulness, even alienation. Though the painting takes sweet treats as its subject, it is, like so many of Thiebaud’s compositions from this period, a commanding study of light and shadow, reflecting his fascination with the effects of fluorescent lighting, which was increasingly being used commercially to heighten the desirability of products for sale.

Wayne Thiebaud, Delicatessen Counter, 1963. Oil on canvas, 153.7 x 185.4 cm, Private Collection. © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Julia Featheringill Photo.

In the summer of 1961, Thiebaud drove from his home in northern California to New York City, where, after numerous rejections, he was taken under the wing of the emerging dealer Allan Stone. That December, he had his New York premier alongside fellow up-and-comer Andy Warhol, with his first sellout solo show following in April 1962. Later that year, he was included in New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum, widely considered to be the first exhibition of pop art in the US. Thiebaud, however, never considered himself to be a pop artist. Indeed, contrary to pop’s embrace of mass-produced imagery and photomechanical processes, his heavily worked surfaces are deeply tactile and sensual, having more in common with his art historical heroes such as Jean-Siméon Chardin, Paul Cézanne and Édouard Manet, whose masterpieces hang nearby in the Courtauld’s permanent collection.

Wayne Thiebaud, Five Hot Dogs, 1961. Oil on canvas, 45.72 x 61cm. Private Collection. © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Photo: John Janca.

Shop windows and counters were an endless source of inspiration for Thiebaud, with processed foods, sweet and savoury, becoming a major preoccupation of his work. But whether painting the counters of delicatessens, cafeterias or sweet stores, he was as much interested in the physical qualities of paint as in his chosen subjects. His use of impasto is especially striking, with thickly applied paint rendering a variety of different surfaces and textures, from cheeses and hot dogs to gumballs and cherry pies. In the large painting Cakes (1963), exuberantly decorated cakes are somehow balanced on surprisingly slender stands. Slathered with thick paint, each sugary creation reflects Thiebaud’s interest in “what happens when the relationship between paint and subject matter comes as close together as I can possibly get them”. Here, the gooey oil paint begins to resemble the liberal amounts of frosting favoured by contemporary American bakers.

Wayne Thiebaud, Pie Rows, 1961. Oil on canvas, 46 x 66cm. Collection of the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Wayne Thiebaud Foundation.

Formal concerns were another great preoccupation for Thiebaud with works such as Pie Rows (1961) reflecting his interest in shape, geometry, pattern and repetition. These diagonal rows of cherry pie, chocolate meringue, lemon meringue and pumpkin pie are composed from basic building blocks – circles and triangles – yet each seductive slice has an individuality all of its own. The use of colour here is extraordinary: the white plates are edged with flashes of orange, green, red and blue, while the countertop shadows mix purple, blue and green. The pie slices themselves are similarly variegated, edging into abstraction with their creamy brushstrokes but always maintaining the semblance of reality. In the early 60s, such imagery became synonymous with the artist, who described his pies as “a play on the closeness of similarities and dissimilarities”.

Wayne Thiebaud, Four Pinball Machines, 1962, Oil on canvas, 172.7 x 182.8cm. Private Collection. © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Courtesy of Acquavella Galleries.

Although Thiebaud remained dedicated to representational painting, his compositions were always the product of memory and imagination. His still lifes were not set up in the studio, nor were they based on photographs or sketches: rather, they were drawn from memories of the urban environment – the stores, diners, arcades, restaurants and self-serve automats frequented by modern city dwellers. His reliance on the mind’s eye over direct observation accounts for the playful and inventive spirit that infuses so much of the work in this compelling exhibition. Take Four Pinball Machines (1962), one of the few pictures depicting non-foodstuffs. Here, the brightly coloured machines are decorated with geometric designs referring to recent developments in abstract painting: the nested squares of Frank Stella, the concentric circles of Kenneth Noland and the rigid grids of Ellsworth Kelly. Essentially a painting about painting, it illustrates how Thiebaud’s project was as much about finding his place in contemporary art as it was a response to American popular culture.

Wayne Thiebaud in his studio in Sacramento with Professor Paul Beckmann, 1962. Collection of the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. © Wayne Thiebaud / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025.

Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life confronts us with an abundance of pleasure and distraction. But are we witnessing a celebration or critique of the American dream and its associated values? Thiebaud remained equivocal on this question, simply stating: “Artists should not have ideas.” This ambiguity adds another layer of intrigue to his work. Was he painting what he loved, cautioning against excess, or simply using the trappings of modern America as a vehicle to explore the possibilities of paint? Perhaps it was all of these and more. Thiebaud also painted portraits and landscapes, but it was to the tradition of still life painting that he evidently made his most singular contribution.