Candy Counter, from Seven Still-Lifes and a Rabbit (First State)

THIEBAUD, Wayne (1920-2021)

Published by Parasol Press, Ltd. Printed by Crown Point Press in Berkeley, California, New York, 1970

About this Item

(22 x 30 inches). Linocut in black and tan on Arches paper with watermark, signed and dated in pencil, numbered 30/50. There were also 10 artist's proofs. The first state of a limited edition Thiebaud linocut of one of his central Pop Art motifs: the candy counter. The diner, the automat, the ice cream shop, and the candy counter: in these quotidian commercial environments, Thiebaud saw a reflection of Americans themselves. Shiny, colorful exteriors of easy hedonistic joy. In Candy Counter from 1970, Thiebaud presents the confectionary display devoid of its glossy makeup, his stark black and white rendering flattens and distorts our view, making us question what it is we're seeing. It's almost as if a nuclear explosion had been triggered in the background and the fallout has just reached the lollipops. The candy counter was one of Thiebaud's central motifs and is seen in some of his major works dating back to his career-making 1962 show at Allan Stone in New York. Numerous paintings depicting the same sort of glass displays recur throughout his oeuvre, most of which present the counter in a Pop Realism style, accentuating the attractive aspects of the products in the manner of commercial photography. For that reason, Thiebaud's work often comes across as cheerleading; it is in prints such as Candy Counter in which we see the totality of Thiebaud's view toward mass consumerism. Candy Counter is from a series of prints created 1970-1971 for Parasol Press titled Seven Still-Lifes and a Rabbit. This is the first state of Candy Counter, the second does not print the background. Thiebaud (1920-2021) was born in Mesa, Arizona, into a Mormon family. He apprenticed at Walt Disney Studios before working in the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1945. He then attended San José State University on the GI Bill before transferring to California State University, Sacramento, where he took his bachelor's and master's degrees. Thiebaud was hired as an assistant professor at UC Davis in 1960, taught until 1991, and remained professor emeritus thereafter. Prior to teaching, Thiebaud spent the 1950s working in ad agencies on the coasts. His familiarity with commercial imagery became foundational to his later work. Thiebaud's paintings articulated a Pop Realism that departed from the appropriative visual techniques of Warhol and Lichtenstein, and could be equally positioned in the mode of earlier representational American painters like Benton, Wood, and Hopper. His lustrous, nearly impasto-thick paintings were able to evoke the pleasure of the sumptuous painting surfaces of the Abstract Expressionists at a time when Pop and Abstract Expressionism seemed diametrically opposed. An iconic American painter of American consumer icons. References: Thiebaud Graphics: 1964-1971, 33. Seller Inventory # 31160

Bibliographic Details

Title: Candy Counter, from Seven Still-Lifes and a ...

Publisher: Parasol Press, Ltd. Printed by Crown Point Press in Berkeley, California, New York

Publication Date: 1970

Signed: Signed by Author(s)