Tickets now on sale for The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life

Tickets are now on sale for The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life, opening at The Courtauld Gallery on 10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026.

Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) is now considered to be one of the greatest and most original American artists of the 20th century. Over the course of his long life, working mainly in Sacramento, California, Thiebaud developed a unique style of painting to express his vision of modern American subjects.  

The exhibition – the first ever museum show of Wayne Thiebaud in the UK – will present Thiebaud’s remarkable, vibrant and lushly painted still-lifes of quintessentially post-war American subjects, from diner food and deli counters to gumball dispensers and pinball machines. These are the paintings with which Thiebaud made his name in the USA in the early 1960s.  

Thiebaud considered the everyday objects of American life to be a vital subject for contemporary art, and he saw his work as continuing the radical legacy of earlier still-life paintings by Chardin, Manet, Cézanne and others. Thiebaud believed in the importance of commonplace objects that might otherwise be overlooked or considered kitsch. His work turns hot dogs, lemon meringue pies and glossy cream cakes into the stuff of profound modern painting.   

The exhibition will feature rarely lent works from major museum collections in the USA, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. 

The exhibition’s title supporter is Griffin Catalyst, the civic engagement initiative of Citadel
Founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin.

Tickets on sale now.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition, Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life
10 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026

Courtauld Friends go free.