WESSELMANN Tom

Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1931.

In 1953, his studies were interrupted by a two-year commitment to the army, during which he began drawing comic strips. He then returned to the University of Cincinnati and graduated with a degree in psychology in 1956. He decided to pursue a career in cartooning and enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After graduating, he moved to New York, where he was accepted at the Cooper Union and where his interest turned radically towards the fine arts.

Wesselmann became one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s, rejecting Abstract Expressionism in favour of classical representations of the nude, still life and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and ephemeral advertisements in order to create images as powerful as the Abstract Expressionism he admired.

In the 70s, Wesselmann continued to explore the ideas and media that had preoccupied him in the 60s. He continued to explore shaped canvases and began to create his first works in metal.

He pioneered the development of a laser-cutting application, which enabled him to produce a faithful translation of his drawings in cut metal.

The 1990s and early 2000s saw the artist develop these themes further, creating abstract three-dimensional images that he describes as “a return to what I had desperately been aiming for in 1959”. In his later years, he returned to the female form in his Sunset Nudes series of oil-on-canvas paintings, whose bold compositions, abstract imagery and sanguine mood are often reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s odalisques.