Tom Wesselmann - New Now New York Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Green Gallery, New York
    Private Collection
    Private Collection, Rhinebeck, NY (acquired directly from the above)
    Thence by descent to the present owner

  • Artist Biography

    Tom Wesselmann

    American • 1931 - 2004

    As a former cartoonist and leading figure of the Pop Art movement, Tom Wesselmann spent many years of his life repurposing popular imagery to produce small to large-scale works that burst with color. Active at a time when artists were moving away from the realism of figurative painting and growing increasingly interested in abstraction, Wesselmann opted for an antithetical approach: He took elements of city life that were both sensual and practical and represented them in a way that mirrored Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol's own methodologies.

    Wesselmann considered pop culture objects as exclusively visual elements and incorporated them in his works as pure containers of bold color. This color palette became the foundation for his now-iconic suggestive figurative canvases, often depicting reclining nudes or women's lips balancing a cigarette.

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151

Study for Great American Nude #54

signed and dated "Tom Wesselmann 63" upper right
pencil on brown paper
17 1/4 x 22 3/4 in. (43.8 x 57.8 cm)
Executed in 1963.

Please note that this work will be included in the Tom Wesselmann Digital Catalogue Raisonné Project published by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.

Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000 

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com
 

New Now

New York Auction 12 March 2024