Tom Wesselmann

Born in 1931 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Died in 2004 in New York City, USA

Tom Wesselmann was a leading figure of American Pop Art, known for reimagining traditional subjects such as the nude, the still life, and the landscape through the visual language of postwar culture. Initially trained in psychology, he discovered his artistic vocation after serving in the army and later studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Cooper Union in New York. Rejecting the emotional intensity of Abstract Expressionism, he instead embraced the clarity, saturated colours, and bold immediacy of advertising, collage, and mass media.

Wesselmann’s rise to prominence began in the early 1960s with the Great American Nude series, which transformed the classical nude into flat, cropped, and highly stylised compositions. These works juxtaposed female bodies with consumer goods, patriotic motifs, and fragments of domestic interiors, creating images that were at once seductive and critical of American popular culture. His pursuit of clarity and reduction led him to develop shaped canvases, metal cut-outs, and later large-scale sculptural works, all marked by strong graphic impact and precise composition.

Throughout his career, Wesselmann remained committed to exploring the possibilities of representation. While rooted in art-historical traditions, his work employed the aesthetics of contemporary life with irony, sensuality, and striking economy. He continued to experiment until his death in 2004, leaving an oeuvre that stands as one of the most distinctive contributions to Pop Art and to twentieth-century painting.