Tom Wesselmann
1931 - 2004
Final Study for Kate Nude
Oil on canvas
37.5 x 47.6 cm (14 ³/₄ x 18 ³/₄ inches)
Signed, dated and titled on the overlap, Wesselmann 77
37.5 x 47.6 cm (14 ³/₄ x 18 ³/₄ inches)
Signed, dated and titled on the overlap, Wesselmann 77
Galerie Boulakia, Paris, acquired directly from the artist in 2003
Private collection, New York
Private collection, France
Private collection, acquired from the above
Christie’s New York, 2019
Private collection, acquired at the above sale
Phillips New York, 2022
Private collection, acquired at the above sale
Private collection, New York
Private collection, France
Private collection, acquired from the above
Christie’s New York, 2019
Private collection, acquired at the above sale
Phillips New York, 2022
Private collection, acquired at the above sale
Zurich, Galerie von Vertes, Pop and Provocation, 13 February - 28 March 2025
This work is included in the Tom Wesselmann Digital Catalogue Raisonné published by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute under no. 77-2.
This original painting by Tom Wesselmann is available for sale.
This original painting by Tom Wesselmann is available for sale.
Tom Wesselmann
biography
Born in Cincinnati, Tom Wesselmann studied at Hiram College and the University of Cincinnati, graduating in psychology. Military service in the early 1950s coincided with a turn to drawing, after which he attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In 1956 he moved to New York to study at Cooper Union. By the end of the decade, he was exhibiting within the Judson Gallery circle, known for championing Pop Art, while supporting himself through teaching.
Wesselmann’s early practice developed through collage and assemblage with magazine and billboard imagery, fabric, and household objects. Around 1961 he established two foundational series—Great American Nude and Still Life—that set boldly contoured forms and saturated colour against the vernacular of American consumer culture. He is frequently grouped with Pop Art, though he often resisted the label, framing his aims as formal: composition, colour relationships, and the activation of the picture plane. An early admiration for Matisse and de Kooning informed his attention to contour and chromatic intensity.
Through the mid to late 1960s Wesselmann expanded the scale and format of his work with shaped canvases, relief constructions and the Bedroom Paintings, in which cropped female figures, furniture and appliances create sharply staged interiors. The Smoker and Mouth works, and later beach scenes and seascapes, pursued an equally distilled vocabulary of lips, cigarettes, waves and horizon lines, alternating between painterly passages and flat, commercial surfaces.
From the 1970s he translated his line into three dimensions with cut-metal Steel Drawings and aluminium reliefs, while maintaining a substantial print practice in screenprint and lithography.
Wesselmann’s first solo exhibition took place at Tanager Gallery, New York, in 1961, followed by regular solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Museum exhibitions and retrospectives consolidated his reputation, and his work entered major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Tate, London. He died in New York in 2004.
Wesselmann’s early practice developed through collage and assemblage with magazine and billboard imagery, fabric, and household objects. Around 1961 he established two foundational series—Great American Nude and Still Life—that set boldly contoured forms and saturated colour against the vernacular of American consumer culture. He is frequently grouped with Pop Art, though he often resisted the label, framing his aims as formal: composition, colour relationships, and the activation of the picture plane. An early admiration for Matisse and de Kooning informed his attention to contour and chromatic intensity.
Through the mid to late 1960s Wesselmann expanded the scale and format of his work with shaped canvases, relief constructions and the Bedroom Paintings, in which cropped female figures, furniture and appliances create sharply staged interiors. The Smoker and Mouth works, and later beach scenes and seascapes, pursued an equally distilled vocabulary of lips, cigarettes, waves and horizon lines, alternating between painterly passages and flat, commercial surfaces.
From the 1970s he translated his line into three dimensions with cut-metal Steel Drawings and aluminium reliefs, while maintaining a substantial print practice in screenprint and lithography.
Wesselmann’s first solo exhibition took place at Tanager Gallery, New York, in 1961, followed by regular solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Museum exhibitions and retrospectives consolidated his reputation, and his work entered major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Tate, London. He died in New York in 2004.
Tom Wesselmann
biography
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