Wayne Thiebaud Etching

Wayne Thiebaud’s pastel-hued still-life paintings and prints of baked goods, gumball machines, hot dogs and paint cans are often associated with the Pop art movement, thanks to the mass-cultural appeal of their content. Stylistically, however, Thiebaud eschewed the precision found in the art of such Pop giants as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in favor of a more painterly approach, not unlike that of the Italian modernist Giorgio Morandi, whose dreamy paintings of vessels and household objects are simple yet richly atmospheric.

Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920 and grew up in Southern California from the age of six months. As a high schooler, he had a summer apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios, which led to a stint as a graphic artist in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit during World War II. After the war, he attended the California State College at Sacramento on the G.I. Bill, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1951 and earning a master’s soon after. He went on to teach at the University of California, Davis, from 1960 to ’91.

In the late ’50s, time spent living in New York City proved crucial to Thiebaud’s career. There, he befriended Abstract Expressionist painters Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline and drew inspiration from the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Admiring the color and form on display in New York’s many bakeries, he began painting small canvases featuring rows of treats, which would become one of his central subjects. Though Thiebaud himself doesn’t identify as a Pop artist, the first major exhibition that brought him national renown was a seminal 1962 Pop show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in Manhattan. That same year, he was included in "New Painting of Common Objects” at the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, which also featured paintings by Ed Ruscha and Jim Dine. Iconic works such as Pie Counter (1963) demonstrate Thiebaud’s signature treatment of commonplace items with the grandeur and scale of a landscape.

Thiebaud’s interest in exaggerated colors and vernacular subject matter — characteristics that call to mind images found in mid-century advertising — made him an intriguing figure occupying the hazy borderlands between fine and commercial art. Yet through a masterful handling of paint, evocative use of light and poignant sense of isolation, Thiebaud’s work is unquestionably thoughtful and singular. His later forays into landscape painting, as seen in Steep Street (1989) or Country City (1988), bring to bear his bold use of color on complex urban scenes.

Pieces by Thiebaud can be found in the collections of major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among many others. In 1994, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton.

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Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

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