Art Enthusiasts | Art Galleries and Dealers
Join the Global Art Traders family and sign up HERE
Our website uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Find out more here
Tom Wesselmann (American, b. 1931) was one of the contributors to the three original portfolios that launched the Pop Art Movement
Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati in 1931, and studied art first in Cincinnati, then in New York at the Cooper Union. 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. Wesselmann, 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.
Thus, 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. This is what brought him fame and notoriety as a founder of American POP ART.
In the late 1960s an increasingly dominant eroticism emerged in works, with its more literal but still intense colours and tight, formal composition. The pictorial elements, exaggerated in their arabesque forms and arbitrary coloring, became significantly larger in scale in his works of the 1970s. Enormous, partially free-standing still-lifes moved into sculptural space, and finally became discrete sculptures of sheet metal. In the 1980s he returned to works for the wall with cut-out steel or aluminium drawings.
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.
His works are in most major American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., the Walker ArtCenter and the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts in Minneapolis, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the Worcester Art Museum, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts in Kansas City MO, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and many others. His works can also be seen in important public museums in Germany, France, Denmark,
Rosemary Lying on One Elbow
Nude with Bouquet and Stockings
Monica Sitting with Elbows on Knees
Monica Lying Down One Arm Up
Study for sunset nude with floral blanket
Tiny Dropped Bra (Maquette Liquitex)
Jeannie's Backyard, Easthampton
Monica Nude with Matisse
Embossed Nude #8
Monica Lying on Blanket Steel Drawing
Wildflower Bouquet
Cynthia in the Bedroom
Bedroom Face with Orange Wallpaper
Still Life with Blowing Curtain (Red)
Still Life with Petunias, Lilies and Fruit
Still Life with Matisse and Johns
Mixed Bouquet with Leger, 1993
Galleries And Art Dealers
Want to Join? Full information HERE Register NOW
© Copyright 2021 Global Art Traders. All rights reserved.
You need to Log in or Register to access this feature