Wayne Thiebaud: Draftsman

Best known for his luscious paintings of pies and ice-cream cones, American artist Wayne Thiebaud (born 1920) has been an avid and prolific draftsman since he began his career in the 1940s as an illustrator and cartoonist. This book of about ninety drawings – compiled with the full cooperation of the artist to accompany a major new exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum – explores the wide range of Thiebaud’s production on paper, including early sketches, luminous pastels and watercolours, and charcoal drawings made in connection with his teaching. In subjects ranging from deli counters and isolated figures to dramatic views of San Francisco’s plunging streets, Thiebaud’s drawings endow the most banal, everyday scenes with a sense of poetry and nostalgia.

Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, with illuminating texts, including an extensive interview with the artist, Wayne Thiebaud: Draftsman is the first major publication devoted to his lifelong engagement with drawing.

Table of Contents

Director’s Foreword • Acknowledgments • Lenders to the Exhibition • Drawing Keeps
You from Cheating • Plates • Thumbnails and Notations: Thiebaud’s Sketches • Sketches
The Fastest Pencil in the West: A Conversation with Wayne Thiebaud • Bibliographyengagement with drawing.

About the Author

Isabelle Dervaux is the Acquavella Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum. She has published extensively on 20th-century art, including essays on Surrealist drawing, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko and Jean Dubuffet.