Tom Wesselmann
Tom Wesselmann was one of the leading pop art artists of the 1960’s. Wesslemann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and went on to attend Cincinnati University. He then served in the military from 1951-54. While he was serving, he began to draw cartoons in his downtime. This blossomed the start of his artistic journey, as he turned a hobby into a career once out of the military. He then graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and then was accepted into Cooper Union in New York, where he continued his studies.
Post graduation, Wesselmann burst onto the scene as a pivotal artist of the American Pop Art movement. While many at the time were focused more on abstract representations, he was one of the artists to bring back more literal representations into the movement. He started out working with collages and assemblages of things like magazines, advertisements, etc. It was during the 1960’s he created his Great American Nude series, a series he is very well known for. Transitioning into the 1970s, he began his Standing Still Life series, which consisted of free standing shaped canvases, bringing a larger than life presence to everyday small objects. By the 1990s, he came full circle and embraced what he at first overlooked, abstract imagery. Wesselmann spent over four decades in New York City, forever evolving as an artist before his death in 2004.
Wesselmann’s artwork still lives today through many public and private collections such as: Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; The Museum of Modem Art, New York, NY; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington DC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Musee d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice, France; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria; Nasjonalgalieriet, Oslo, Norway; National Galerie, Berlin, Germany;Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; Artsonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyungju City, Korea and many more across the globe.
