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 Tom Wesselmann  (1931 - 2004)

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Lived/Active: New York      Known for: pop nude figure, mod real images
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Ad Code: 1
Tom Wesselmann
from Auction House Records.
GREAT AMERICAN NUDE NO. 48
© Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY See Details
This biography from the Archives of 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.


Biography from Rogallery.com:
Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, studied at Hiram College and then at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a degree in psychology in 1956. After two years in the army, he attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati and then went to New York to study at the Cooper Union Art School. Although his earliest works leaned toward abstract expressionism his style underwent a series of dramatic changes and eventually led to his becoming an important exponent of pop art.

In 1961, Wesselmann had his first one-man show in New York and began his most famous series, -Great American Nudes. Since then he has had frequent exhibits in prominent American and European galleries. His work has been included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Institute, Minneapolis, to name just three of a long, impressive list.

One year after 1961, he participated in the group exhibition 'New Realists' at the Sidney Janis Gallery, his international career with numerous exhibitions started off. The same year his first assemblages with the title 'Still Life' came into existence. In 1963 Wesselmann married his girl-friend and fellow student Claire Selley, who also was his most important model. He began a series of 'Bathtub Collages'. In 1966 the first of many one-man shows took place at the Janis Gallery. In 1964 Tom Wesselmann began with further series, e.g. 'Bedroom Paintings', 'Seascapes' and 'Smokers', which he continued until the early 1980s. In 1980 he published a treatise about his artistic development under the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth. In 1983 first 'Metal Works' were produced, which were based on the artist's drawings and sketches and which are still in the centre of the artist's interest. In 1994 a comprehensive retrospective took place at the Kunsthalle in Tübingen. Wesselmann died in New York on 17 December 2004. His choice of trivial motifs, thier monumentalisation, reduction to stereotypes, sexual embelematic as well as the use of bright colours made Wesselmann a co-founder of the American Pop-Art during the 1960s.

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.

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Tom Wesselmann is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Painters of Nudes
Modernism



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