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THIEBAUD VIA MORANDI from Victor Loh on Vimeo.

Artist Wayne Thiebaud discusses his appreciation and connection for Giorgio Morandi in the interview video THIEBAUD VIA MORANDI. Thiebaud began his artist career at the age of 14 years old drawing caricatures and is still known to this day for his cartoonist graphic abilities.

Since Thiebaud did not go to traditional art school, his apprenticeship was crafted and cultivated by the individual artist and graphic designer he interacted with. Later in his life Thiebaud was introduced to fine art. The tradition of fine art became vastly important and pivotal in his artists’ career and how influential masters such as Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Piet Mondrian are to the history of art.

These masters influenced not just contemporary paintings today but also commercial art and design. Peaked by this revelation for fine art painting his mentor at the time introduced him into the discipline of painting and its critical concerns about being a painter.

Caricature is a central aspect of all painting. Thiebaud richly concludes that caricature is probably the stylistic variance that can be determined in painting. For example if you look at works from the masters Bonnard or Giorgio Morandi, they are caricaturizing their form thus making their work unique. Colors, form… they are all representations of the artists’ caricatures in their artwork thus creating an identity for the artist.

Morandi’s work highly influences Thiebaud. In 1961 Thiebaud took a reproduction of Morandi’s and used the composition and form to create a painting unique to the artist that was keeping a somewhat similar nuance of color, form, value, and limitation of Morandi’s work. This intimate connection was Thiebaud’s first real introduction to feeling connected to Morandi.

As an American painter, Thiebaud’s work may seem to appear more comical in relation to Morandi’s work but it is evident how closely they relate in ways of pressure, tension, balance, and interaction between planes. Painters of all kinds embrace Morandi’s work because it is so rich in illusions and references dealing with painting’s components.

One of the ideas that paintings depend on is the completion and the viewer. If the viewer is overwhelmed by the painting, if there seems to be nothing for the viewer to do, then the question is why does the painting exist?! The interaction and dialogue is crucial to the life of the work. For more information regarding interview with Wayne Thiebaud, (click here).