Tom Wesselmann

Born in 1931 in Cincinnati in Ohio, he was, at a year old, the age of Warhol, Oldenburg and Rosenquist. As many of pop artists, he took an indirect route before becoming an artist, studying psychology before approaching art, in his hometown and then, from 1956, at the Cooper Union in New York. , he will draw for magazines, in parallel with his art. If it is exercised first in an expressionist vein, it is the decisive gesture of the collage that brings him to work by which we soon know him. From 1959, he assembled first abstract collages. But it is the female nude that he soon identifies as the material of his work: the first of his & nbsp; Great American Nudes & Nbsp; (great American nudes) dates from 1961, the year of his first personal exhibition to be held Gallery, in New York. In 1963, he participated in the exhibition "Pop Goes The East" at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. In the 1970s, he worked on paintings detached from the wall which canceled the distinction between painting and sculpture. Since 1983, it has focused on colorful drawings based on sketches enlargements, postponed to aluminum or steel. Its work is divided into 2 major series, large female nudes and still lifes (Still Life ) Made from found items and collages of images cut out from magazines. Eroticism is constantly present in the series of its "great American nudes" (Great American Nude). Its subject is the advertising shot personified by the woman whose attributes are strongly underlined: sensually open mouth, bright teeth of whiteness, button breasts, hips and attractive thighs, pubic hair highlighted. The environment is whatever, a living room or bedroom where the walls of American historical characters appear, such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, or paintings by Cézanne, Matisse, Mondrian, Lichtenstein or Motherwell. The decorative element has always been very present.