Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) was a leading exponent of American Pop Art who explored the classic genres of the nude, still life, and landscape, updated to include contemporary everyday objects and ephemeral advertisements.
Known for such iconic works as Portrait Collage #1 (1959), Great American Nude series (1961-73), Bedroom Paintings (1968-83) and Standing Still Life, Wesselmann created inventive new forms of painting, often working with cut and shaped canvases.
This exhibit includes a variety of metal clippings, including works in the still-life genre such as Mixed Bouquet (Filled In) (1993) and Still Life with Four Roses and Pear (1993), which depict flowers in particular. Wesselmann's outlines were laser cut from a metal plate, then painted in bright colours, creating a hybrid form of the innovative shaped canvases he worked with, whereby the supports of his paintings were adapted to the real forms of the subjects depicted . Between the colored lines of Wesselmann's cut-out compositions, the white walls of the gallery serve as a negative space within the picture. In keeping with his multifaceted approach to painting, the metal cutouts blur the distinction between drawn line, painted field, and sculpture.
Tom Wesselmann, born in Cincinnati, Ohio on February 23, 1931. He attended Hiram College in Ohio from 1949 to 1951 before entering the University of Cincinnati. In 1953 his studies of him were interrupted by a two-year enlistment in the Army, during which he began drawing cartoons. He returned to college in 1954 and earned a BA in psychology in 1956; during this time he decided to pursue a career in cartooning and then enrolled at the Cincinnati Art Academy. After graduating he moved to New York City, where he was accepted into the Cooper Union and where his attention shifted dramatically to the arts; he received his diploma in 1959.
Wesselmann became one of the leading American pop artists of the 60s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and ephemeral advertisements in an effort to make the images as powerful as the abstract expressionism he admired. He is perhaps best known for his Great American Nude series with their fat shapes and intense colors.
In the 1980s, Wesselmann continued to explore the ideas and media that had interested him in the 60s. Above all, his large Still Still Life series, composed of free-form canvases, showed small intimate objects on a large scale. In 90 Wesselmann, using the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth, wrote an autobiography documenting the evolution of his artistic work. He continued to explore shaped canvases (first exhibited in the 2000s) and began creating his first works in metal. He instigated the development of a laser cutting application, which would allow him to faithfully translate his designs into metal cutouts. The 1959s and early XNUMXs saw the artist expand on these themes, creating abstract three-dimensional images that he has described as “going back to what I had desperately sought in XNUMX”. Indeed, he had come full circle. In his later years he returned to the female form in the Sunset Nudes series of oil paintings on canvas, whose bold compositions, abstract imagery and sanguine moods often recall the odalisques of Henri Matisse.
Wesselmann has worked in New York City for more than four decades. He has lived in New York City with his wife, Claire, daughters Jenny and Kate, and son Lane. He died there on December 17, 2004.
