EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS

New York, NY, 2019 – Acquavella Galleries is pleased to present Wayne Thiebaud: Mountains 1965-2019, featuring 33 works by the distinguished American painter. While Thiebaud is most often acclaimed for his bright and upbeat paintings of desserts and everyday objects, Thiebaud’s depictions of California mountains have been an enduring focus of the artist’s practice for more than 50 years. The works in the exhibition are comprised of a range of media, including acrylic, charcoal, graphite, oil and watercolor on board, canvas and paper.

Distinct from traditional landscape paintings, Thiebaud’s mountain series invokes at once the conflicting natures of abstraction and representation. The works on view concentrate on the Sierra Nevada range and feature the artist’s immediately recognizable exaggerated palette, and meticulous impasto technique while introducing experiments with skewed perspective and sense of scale. To fully interpret his immense and daunting subjects the artist eliminates all signs of human presence. The abstracted, yet material mountains present the grandeur of nature’s force.

Wayne Thiebaud began producing landscapes in the 1960s, focusing on dizzying and dramatic depictions of San Francisco, flattened aerial views of the Sacramento River Delta, and foreboding representations of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Turning 99 this year, the artist lives and works in Sacramento, painting landscapes and portraits as well as his signature still lifes.

A fully illustrated hardcover catalogue will accompany the exhibition and will include critical essays by art historian Margaretta M. Lovell and curator and writer Michael M. Thomas.