Tom Wesselmann

Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati / Ohio on 23 February 1931.
Because in the early days of his career he painted still lifes of commercial foodstuffs and, more provocatively, stylized but erotic bodies, or parts thereof (his famous 1960′s ”Great American Nude” series mingled the classic reclining nude with the sexy pinup), he got tagged as a Pop artist.
Interested early on in cartooning, he had a talent for spare, punchy imagery and an eye for catchy color. But his interest in more formal art, particularly that of Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian, is also abundantly evident in this lively display of 44 works on paper, arranged by his daughter Kate. Wesselmann was a compulsive draftsman, producing many color and compositional studies for most of his finished works, and the show covers decade by decade his varying approaches to his three basic subjects: the nude, the still life and the landscape.
Tom Wesselmann died in New York on 17 December 2004. His choice of trivial motifs, thier monumentalisation, reduction to stereotypes, sexual embelematic as well as the use of bright colours made Tom Wesselmann a co-founder of the American Pop-Art during the 1960s.