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Biography of Tom Wesselmann
Tom Wesselmann was a painter born in Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1931. With Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol he is one of the most well known American Pop Art artists. In the early fifities, he started drawing while he enrolled the army. Once done, he resumed his studies and applied to the Art Academy in Cincinnati. Two years later, he joined The Cooper Union in New York; he was very impressed by Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning’s works he had discovered at the MOMA.
After school in 1959, Tom Wesselmann started his artistic career. Because he wanted to distance himself from abstraction - very tpopular at this time - he decided to study traditional painting themes (nude, still life, interiors and portraits). he tried to get rid of Willem de Kooning’s strong influence in order to find his own way. Thus, he left us with different series which will make him famous (« Great American Nudes », « Still Lifes »). His feminine nudes both provocative and depersonalized quickly drew attention.
His first personal exhibition was organized at the Tanager Gallery in New York in 1961. In his paintings, he resorted to collages and juxtapositions, prone to including real objects and borrowings from art history. Very soon he was associated to the Pop Art Movement and then exhibited with artists from that same movement.
In 1983, Tom Wesselmann imagined cutting out steel along drawing lines, thus being able to be hanged on the walls. These will be the « Steel Drawings » and will have a huge success.
In 1980, he published an essay on the development of his painting under the alias Slim Stealingworth. This contributed to make him known in Europe and Asia. At the end of his life, he returned to abstraction without actually denying the figurative aspect of his work.
Although he benefited from major exhibitions abroad, one must wait until spring 2012 to see a retrospective in North America (Montreal).
Tom Wesselmann died in New York in 2004.