Notes

Thomas Wesselmann was one of the leading Pop artists in America in the 1960s and worked mainly in painting, collage, and sculpture. He was trained to interpret aerial photography during the Korean War and began to draw cartoons about his military experiences. On completion of his military service, he took art classes at the Art Academy of Cincinnati whilst studying for a degree in Psychology and in 1956 he studied art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. Wesselmann’s works explored the nude, landscape, and still life images, often in the form of collages incorporating everyday items and advertising slogans.

Wesselmann co-founded the Judson Gallery with Jim Dine and Marc Ratliff in the late 1950s, whilst teaching high school during the day and working on his own practice at night. His Great American Nude series from 1961–1973 is highly considered. This was followed by a period of creating a series of Bedroom Paintings and his Standing Still Life series of enormous, shaped canvases of small intimate objects between 1968 and 1983. Wesselmann used a laser technique to recreate his drawings with cut metal, constantly pushing the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Towards the end of his life, he returned to creating images of the female nude in his Sunset Nude series.

Wesselmann exhibited widely throughout his career and his artworks are represented in private and major public collections throughout the United States of America, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, DC.

Provenance

Martin Lawrence Galleries, New York.

Private Collection.