Biography from Fineartgasm.com:
| Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati in 1931, and studied art first in Cincinnati, then in New York at the Cooper Union. His early paintings were evocative of Abstract Expressionism, influenced by Willem de Kooning. One of the first Pop artists, along with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, Wesselmann started experiments in 1959 with small, abstract collages. Then, in 1960, he adopted advertising images to make bold amusing still lifes and interiors, collages and assemblages using commonplace household items, and often, a highly stylized female nude.
Wesselmann began The Great American Nude Series in 1961, a series of large and small works distinguished by number only. Some of the works include real rather than depicted objects, household objects such as a bathtub, radiator, and toaster. He has continued to feature the female nude in every major series of paintings and sculpture throughout his career. |
Biography from Artbrokering.com:
| Born
in 1931, Tom Wesselmann was formally trained in New York and had his
first one-man exhibition in 1961. A significant contributor to the Pop
Art movement of the sixties, Wesselmann's large scale collages and
paintings of nudes, landscapes and still-lifes captured the attention
of collectors and critics almost immediately. He has pioneered a number
of art forms now strongly associated with him, namely his 'drop outs'
where negative shapes become positive shapes and his 'cutouts' which
utilize laser cut metal to create extraordinary three-dimensional
drawings. He too, has been a remarkable printmaker having created
large, spectacular silkscreens and lithographs.
The color and
impact of his work has earned him a respected position in Contemporary
art and his works can be found in important collections around the
world. |
Biography from AskART:
| Known for his Pop-Art nude figures--the Great American Nude Series-- as
well as collages, often with food themes, Tom Wesselmann is a
Cincinnati born artist who studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and
at Cooper Union in New York City in the late 1950s.
When he was
a student at Cooper Union, he was much influenced by Abstract
Expressionism, especially Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
However, he turned away from that style because he determined these
artists had become so introspective that there was little room for
creative exploration by others.
His reaction took him to Pop
Art, the other extreme of action painting to a tightly controlled style
and subject matter that was mundane--the antithesis of psychological
complexities. Joining a rebellion against the New York School, that
which had become the establishment, he, like Andy Warhol and Wayne
Thiebaud, asserted that everyday objects had significance unto
themselves and that they were worthy of depiction because of a common
understanding about what they were.
Of this reaction, Norman
Geske of Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery wrote: "The swing of the pendulum
was complete, from the esoteric to the commonplace, from passionate
individualism to the popular language of the marketplace. The new point
of view was not merely popular, it was 'pop,' assertive, declamatory,
defiant, achieving a stylistic identity in the soup cans of Andy
Warhol, the comic strips of Roy Lichtenstein, the billboards of James
Rosenquist, and the domestic icons of Tom Wesselmann."
In 1959,
Wesselmann began his collages which showed influence of modernist
artists ranging from Willem de Kooning and Henri Matisse. These
collages were usually interior scenes with nude figures, a subject he
did so repeatedly that it seemed an obsession. During the mid-1960s, he
focused solely on female nudes, presenting them as sex objects with
emphasis on breasts, mouth, and genitalia.
Sources include:
Dictionary of American Artists by Matthew Baigell and
The American Painting Collection of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery by Norman Geske and Karen Janovy.
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Tom Wesselmann is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Painters of Nudes
Modernism
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