For the first time in the United Kingdom, an exhibition is dedicated to Wayne Thiebaud (1920 - 2021), the renowned American artist celebrated for his still lifes that embody the imagery of postwar consumerism. The show, American Still Life, presents a selection of his most iconic works from the 1960s: cakes, ice creams, candies, gumball machines and bowling alleys appear in his paintings with a vibrant light that conveys both beauty and melancholy. At the height of America’s economic boom, Thiebaud painted everyday objects with great pictorial care, evoking abundance and excess but also a subtle sense of distance and isolation. “Every era produces its own still life" he declared in 1962, positioning himself as a continuator of a tradition that includes Chardin, Cézanne and Manet, reinterpreted in a modern key. The exhibition brings together works often shown for the first time outside the United States, including the monumental Cakes from the National Gallery of Art in Washington and Four Pinball Machines from a private collection, alongside important loans from institutions such as the Whitney Museum, the Smithsonian and the museums of San Francisco, as well as contributions from the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. Alongside the main exhibition, the Courtauld is also presenting Delights, a complementary section devoted to a series of 17 prints created by the artist in 1964. These black-and-white works once again feature his beloved subjects - ice creams, cakes, gumball machines - highlighting his rigorous draftsmanship and his experimental approach to printmaking. Curated by Karen Serres and Barnaby Wright, the exhibition elegantly places Thiebaud’s work in dialogue with European masterpieces from the Courtauld’s collection, including Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, a painting from which the artist drew profound inspiration for his own displays of modern consumer culture. This double exhibition offers a comprehensive portrait of the artist: from painter able to transform the everyday into a universal subject of art, to printmaker attentive to form and material. For admirers of twentieth-century American painting, it is an unprecedented opportunity to contemplate the epic and melancholic allure of the world that Thiebaud so masterfully conveyed with brush and print.
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