Tom Wesselmann: Biography & Artwork

Tom
Wesselmann

Reminiscent of 70s advertisements, leading American Pop Art artist Tom Wesselmann is renowned for his studies of nudes, smokers and Pop motifs. To buy or sell prints and editions from Wesselmann's portfolio browse available artwork from our network and enquire today. Contact us for complimentary market advice and free valuations on any print, with zero obligation to sell.

Biography

Focusing on the nude, landscapes and still life, key Pop artist Tom Wesselmann is known for his bold palette and stylised figures. The artist shied away from contemporary movements such as Abstract Expressionism, instead favouring the everyday objects and commercial ties that Pop Art had to offer.

Wesselmann’s career started in the US Army in 1953 where he spent two years in military service. During that time he learned and then taught aerial photography interpretation. He began to draw cartoons about his time in the army, achieving some initial success with cartoon strips published in magazines such as 1000 Jokes and True.
When he returned to his hometown of Cincinannati, Wesselmann took up a BA in psychology at The University of Cincinnati, whilst also taking classes at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In 1956 Wesselmann moved to New York City to study art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and art where he met and was taught by artist Nicholas Marsicano. During this time he also met his wife and muse Claire Selley.
Early in his career Wessellmann was fascinated by the work of Willem de Kooning, but felt in order to grow as an artist he needed to find his own path. Moving away from ‘action’ painting, Wesselmann consciously focused on more traditional subject matters.
By the 1960s Wesselmann was working as one of America’s pioneering pop artists, creating collage and hybrid sketch artworks combining classic subject matters such as the female form, still life and interiors. In line with his Pop Art contemporaries, Wesselmann’s work often his work took the form of collage; his 1959 artwork Portrait Collage #1 uses a number of found objects, including board, cut out advertisements and organic matter in the form of a dried leaf.
Wesselmann found real success during the 1960s. During this time his collage artworks became more sexually charged, using found images from magazines and images of the female nude. His well known series The Great American Nudes was contemporaneously popular, and shot Wesselmann into mainstream consciousness and popularity.
During his lifetime Wesselmann exhibited internationally, taking part in several groundbreaking group shows in the 70s, and two major retrospectives that toured Europe and Japan towards the end of his career. His artworks are also housed in permanent collections across the globe, including Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
Wesselmann is perhaps best known for his series of female nudes known as Great American Nudes. Artworks in this series are often sexually charged, honing in on a single body part - lips, a nipple or the model's tan lines. They use simple, clean colour palettes and have been described as ‘joyful’.
Despite Great American Nudes being a series attributed to the 1960s, Wesselmann returns to the subject of the female form again and again throughout his lifetime.
Wesselmann’s admiration of Willem de Kooning is widely documented. He has been quoted as saying 'In my early days, I was so envious of [Willem] de Kooning that I almost stopped being a painter' and '...He was what I wanted to be.' However, rather than follow de Kooning, Wesselmann consciously decided to create his own style, following a path away from abstraction. Wesselmann said 'The prime mission of my art, in the beginning, and continuing still, is to make figurative art as exciting as abstract art.'
Wesselmann’s work is also often linked to Pop Art, and though he never felt truly aligned with the movement there are undeniable parallels in medium and subject matter that link his work to that of contemporaries Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton.
Wesselmann’s body of work spans multiple disciplines and mediums, exploring styles and techniques over several decades. His artistic oeuvre contains etchings and prints, paintings, collage and sculpture depicting nudes, landscapes and still life, and yet each work carries an element of Wesselmann’s distinctive style. Colours are flat, clean and bright with reductive forms, striking parallels with the Pop Art movement.
Wesselmann’s later work of the 1990s and early 2000s saw the artist expanding on themes found in his artwork previously. Taking the bold line and colour found in his earlier nudes, Wesselmann created three dimensional forms which moved towards the abstraction he had previously avoided. In his own words he was 'going back to what I had desperately been aiming for in 1959.'
His final years saw the return of the female nude to his work with thick line work and bold colours (and tan lines) evocative of his earlier style.

Often grouped together with other examples of American Pop Artist Tom Wesselmann’s so-called Mouth paintings, Smoker No. 9 (1973) constitutes a beautifully smooth depiction of another icon of post-war American culture: the cigarette. In May 2008, the work sold for an astounding US$6,761,000 at Christie’s New York, performing just as well as closely related paintings like Smoker No. 5 (Mouth No. 19).

A foremost feature of the Pop Art imaginary, here the cigarette finds itself between a pair of Wesselmann’s signature ‘lips’, painted from drawings of friend and model, Peggy Sarno. A red-hot cigarette end clashes with the deep crimson of the model’s lips and fingernails, evoking the seductive techniques of American consumer advertising. Between these suggestive motifs, the thick fog of tobacco smoke serves to obscure and beguile.

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Biography

Record prices

1. £5.5M for Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nude No.48

2. £3.9M for Tom Wesselmann's Smoker No.5 (Mouth No.19)

3. £3.5M for Tom Wesselmann's Smoker No. 9

4 - 11.

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Tom Wesselmann

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Biography

Beginnings

First Works

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Last Paintings

On the Market

Record prices

1. £5.5M for Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nude No.48

2. £3.9M for Tom Wesselmann's Smoker No.5 (Mouth No.19)

3. £3.5M for Tom Wesselmann's Smoker No. 9

4 - 11.

Related Articles

Under The Hammer: Top Prices Paid For Tom Wesselmann At Auction

Related artists

Google reviews

4.9

Michelle Swann

David Popik

Deborah Ann Bell

VICKIE JAMES

Li Smith

Ian Hall

About

Contact

Tom
Wesselmann

Sell Your Art
with Us