Tom Wesselmann’s evolution as an artist in the 1960s is as impressive to track as it is fascinating. Beginning with his rejection of American-style “action painting” in the early 1960s, Wesselmann’s fondness for figural representation soon began to take center stage. His signature palette of white, red, blue, and gold—a result of a particularly vivid dream—inspired his series of Great American Nudes, premiering at Tanager Gallery in 1961. Wesselmann’s rapid production of the Nudes over the next several years began to form an artistic project with both a beginning and end: the infamous sexual power and cartoonish seduction of the Great American Nude series ceased with #100 in 1973. But even though Wesselmann chose to end this particular series, he continued to anatomize and explore each of his model’s features in even more detail with his shaped canvases and remarkably sensual Mouth series.

Study for Great American Nude #90, 1966 is not only a paradigm of the America’s sexual revolution that was just beginning, but it is also a portrait of Wesselmann’s own romantic fulfillment with his wife and model, Claire Selley. Wesselmann often testified that he found sex to be an integral part of his life, and we can view the total confidence of the figure in this metaphorical light. Her hair a drape of golden perfection, adjacent to Wesselmann’s color-field portrayal of a scene of the utmost serenity, the model wields her nudity not as a weapon of seduction or power, but as an expression of her indomitable personality. Her tan lines and single blue stocking emphasize Wesselmann’s dedication to a realistic portrait despite the fantastical tendencies of his own style. In the present lot, one of his final Studies for the American Nude, Wesselmann tests us with two kinds of resolve: both his and that of his model.