TitleBanana Hand
Artist
Wayne Thiebaud
(1920 - 2021)
Date1977
MediumOil on paper
DimensionsUnframed: 14 1/2 × 19 1/2 in.
Framed: 16 1/4 × 21 1/8 × 1 1/2 in.
SignedSigned at top center, incised in paint: "[heart-shape] Thiebaud 1977".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, December 2, 1987
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1987.43
Label TextWayne Thiebaud first came to prominence on the West Coast in the early 1960s with his realistic paintings of luscious pastries, ice cream cones, and candies painted in enticing colors. Following his service in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, Thiebaud, like numerous other California artists, worked as an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. In 1949 he turned to painting, and continued his formal education at California State University, Sacramento, where he received his B.A. in 1951, and M.A. in 1952. The first of his many solo exhibitions was presented by the Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, in 1951. In the last twenty years the artist has continued to paint confections and candy but now includes the Bay Area landscape among his subjects.Often associated with the Pop Art movement because of his subject matter, Thiebaud's painterly style was in sharp contrast to many Pop artists, who strove to suppress all evidence of the artist's hand in their work. The earliest paintings Thiebaud showed in New York were his depictions of pies, cakes, and candy machines in his 1962 exhibition at the Allan Stone Gallery. By the mid-1960s his subject matter had expanded to include figures, landscapes, and still lifes of flowers and fruit. An intimate painting and almost comical by its arrangement, "Banana Hand" relates to some of the artist's earlier still lifes of the previous decade in the sparse background and the formal display of the fruit.
