Wayne Thiebaud at Museo Morandi

“There are such good lessons to learn from looking at Morandi's work […]. One of them, I think, is the wonder of intimacy and the love of long looking”. — Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud is a key figure on the US contemporary art scene. Although it is impossible to classify him as member of any particular art movement, his interest in everyday objects of mass culture have often led him to be associated with Pop Art.


Conceived as a parallel journey through the works of the two artists, one American and the other Bolognese, the book reveals the close affinities that underlie their work: the interest in everyday items (simplified to the point of becoming purely formal elements), the tendency to align them in rigorously tidy lines, the apparent repetitiveness, the study of variations, the aesthetic isolation of the object and the achievement of visual effects through attention to light, form and quality of brushstroke.

The book includes a piece written by Thiebaud about the oeuvre of Giorgio Morandi, which appeared in the New York Times in 1981, an interview with Wayne Thiebaud by Alessia Masi, a biography and selected bibliography of the American artist.