Famous artist created iconic mural just off Sacramento freeway. You’ll want to take a detour

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When Gioia Fonda cruises down the Highway 50 , she often catches a glimpse of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District building.

But it’s the mural wrapping around SMUD headquarters that draws her in. The walls burst with bold, floating shapes of vibrant orange, yellow and blue hues against a white background.

It resembles a “torn paper collage,” said Fonda, an art professor at Sacramento City College. Even from a distance, zipping down the freeway, the mural sparkles.

“You can see that there’s forms and reflections, but you can’t actually make out what the forms are,” she said. “It’s no specific piece of architecture or boat or anything. It’s just suggested.”

One day, Fonda decided to get up close, swapping out her car for her bike. When she neared the building, she discovered it wasn’t just any mural, it was mosaic, composed of glass tiles.

Later, she learned another fact that astonished her: the mural was made by internationally renowned artist Wayne Thiebaud . He spent much of his career in the Sacramento area, and like Fonda, also taught at Sacramento City College.

Thiebaud completed the mural, titled “Water City,” in 1959 . The SMUD building, at 6201 S Street, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But the mural didn’t immediately strike Fonda as a Thiebaud artwork.

He’s known for his stilllifes of cakes, pies and candies, and often spoke of representing American-culture in his work. The artist famously painted with a knife, as if he was spreading frosting.

On the other hand, “Water City” is abstract, “just on the edge of being representational,” Fonda said, showcasing Thiebaud’s artistic range.

“It shows what he was experimenting with before his other work caught on, which I think is an interesting moment in an artist’s career,” she said.

Thiebaud died on Christmas Day in 2021 at his Land Park home. He was 101. In his early years, he apprenticed as an animator for Walt Disney before his “long and distinguished career as one of the most popular American artists since World War II,” The Bee wrote following his death.

How abstract mural found a home on SMUD building

At 38 years old, Thiebaud, then teaching at Sacramento City College, was commissioned to paint the mural. It’s the artist’s largest public art installation, coming in at 15 feet high by 250 feet wide.

The late Leonard Blackford, founder of Sacramento-based firm Dreyfuss + Blackford Architecture, was friends with Thiebaud and reached out to him. Originally, architects planned to wrap the building in white marble, but Blackford was “itchy” about the idea, according to Peter Saucerman, a former partner at the firm.

Blackford calculated that a glass mural would be cheaper than marble. Plus, the building would have artwork personal to the area.

“That made it a no brainer,” Saucerman said in an interview with The Bee in June. “It was a great idea, and it saved a little bit of money. It was a win-win all around.”

When Thiebaud’s mock-up got the green light, he enlarged the copy of it. In a large hall and in the Sacramento City College auditorium, he projected the sketch and outlined each unit of color, according to The Bee’s archives.

Then, in Italy, a manufacturing firm matched detailed tiles to a color palette Thiebaud approved. The firm sent the tiles to Sacramento.

“Since their arrival this fall, the patterned sheets have been mortared under the watchful eyes of Thiebaud and the architects,” according to a Bee story from 1959.

The original watercolor sketch has stayed in SMUD’s lobby, where visitors can still admire it.

“The mural is a noticeable, iconic part of the Sacramento art scene,” said Gamaliel Ortiz, a spokesperson for SMUD. “He’s in all these great museums. SMUD is proud to have his artwork as a very visible piece of SMUD’s own iconic building.”

“Water City” wasn’t Thiebaud’s first mural — or his first displayed in the capital city. For the 1954 California State Fair, Thiebaud created a “light hearted, cock eyed mural” near the entrance of the Arts Building in the fairgrounds, on Stockton Boulevard at the time, according to The Bee archives.

During the 1950s, Thiebaud experimented with abstraction, said Fred Dalkey, a friend of Thiebaud’s who also worked at Sacramento City College. Thiebaud would have been influenced by notable abstract painters, like Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, Dalkey told The Bee last month.

The mural underwent a restoration in 2019.

That was part of an extensive $72 million renovation of the SMUD building. Workers cleaned tiles and replaced cracks “to bring it back to its original self,” Ortiz said.

“Even Thiebaud came by and inspected it. He was 98 years old, and he praised how well SMUD did in restoring his artwork,” Ortiz said.

Sacramento residents see themselves represented in the mural

As an artist, Fonda related to Thiebaud’s story. In her own work, she has gravitated toward more public art in recent years.

At the start of his career, Thiebaud was rejected by several galleries before he found one to represent his work. Since Sacramento has a smaller market for paintings than a bigger city, public art presented an opportunity, Fonda said.

“I imagine that was a pretty significant commission for him to get at that time,” she said.

In 1959, The Bee described the mural as an “artistic accomplishment, but only another step in what appears to be a promising career for Thiebaud.”

Fonda also has an artwork in the SMUD building, titled ”Energy Scrolls,” completed in 2022 — over 60 years after Thiebaud completed his mural. For the piece, she was inspired by ”Water City” and the building’s architecture.

”Energy Scrolls” consists of colorful suspended sculptures that incorporate paper cutting traditions.

Ortiz, a Sacramento native, said “Water City” reminds him of home. In the colorful forms, he sees buildings, people and water.

“It’s very reflective of the region in Sacramento, which adds to that connection we have to this artist who produced incredible work,” Ortiz said.

The next step? Hit the printing press, some say.

“I don’t know why we don’t see more postcards of it for sale,” Fonda said.

But seeing Water City on paper won’t match experiencing it live. Like Fonda, if you ever find yourself on Highway 50, try taking a detour to see it up close.

To appreciate the mural’s beauty, “you need to almost put your hands on it,” Dalkey said.