CENTENARIAN’S CANVAS

Nearing 100, Wayne Thiebaud critiques 5 of his signature works

Wayne Thiebaud will begin his 101st year by arising before first light, making the morning commute upstairs to his home studio in the serene Land Park neighborhood of Sacramento, and laying thick swaths of oil paint on canvas.

His 100th birthday falls on a Sunday, Nov. 15, but Thiebaud ( pronounced “Teebo”) works weekends. Birthdays too. Surely the most popular painter alive and working in California, Thiebaud answers his own home telephone. His speech is friendly and modest. Asked what his birthday plans are, he says, “I am just trying to make it there.”

During his 99th year, he debuted a series of clown paintings. During his 100th he has moved on to shopping malls, but he’s not happy with his progress.

“I’ll just go to work,” Thiebaud says, when pressed on the topic of his birthday. “I’m a pretty boring guy.”

But a vintage Thiebaud just sold at auction for $ 19 million, proof that the art world has never found boring his representational paintings of pies, cakes and gumball machines; his realistic portraits; his skewed mappings of the dizzyingly steep San Francisco streets and the tangled SacramentoSan Joaquin River Delta.

There is always demand to see his work, so on Friday, Oct. 16, the centennial begins with “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings,” at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Also on Friday, “Wayne Thiebaud” opens at Berggruen Gallery on Hawthorne Street, directly across from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. SFMOMA, which is offering free admission and parking through Sunday, Oct. 18, has added to its collection of 58 Thiebauds with “Buffet,” ( 197275) which looks like a Thiebaud birthdayparty spread waiting for a line of eaters.

The Berggruen show will display 50 works, many borrowed from private collectors and rarely seen. The Crocker show is twice that size, with 100 Thiebauds for 100 years.

It is his eighth exhibition at the Crocker, going back to his first solo show anywhere in 1951. Nearly half of the 100 works come from the Crocker’s own collection, and it will fill the museum’s entire exhibition space plus an adjacent gallery. Thiebaud says it is the largest show of his combined works ever amassed.

One hundred oil paintings and works on paper is a lot to discuss, especially for Thiebaud, who is hesitant to discuss even one. He lights up when asked to discuss other painters, which he did two years ago when he curated a gallery show at SFMOMA.

But 20 minutes is the limit when discussing his own work. To maximize efficiency, he agreed in advance to select five pictures from the Crocker show to critique.

“What you have here are five paintings that represent what I do, which is to try and paint at any time any subject matter in any medium under the general heading ‘ people, places and things,’ ” he says.

On Nov. 15, the Crocker will host a membersonly birthday party for Thiebaud, but the honoree has not committed to attending. You are more likely to catch him there on some random weekday, his lanky frame hunched over one of his masterpieces, as he looks for flaws that could be improved upon if only he could pull it off the wall and take it back to his studio. Sneak up and eavesdrop and this is what you might hear him say:

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle 2018 Artist Wayne Thiebaud ( right) curates paintings for SFMOMA’s collection in September 2018. Beside him is friend and painter Clay Vorhes as they look at a piece that has just been placed.