With its clean, sunny palette and sensual depiction of the female nude, Cut-Out Nude Study, 1965, is a captivating example of iconic Pop artist Tom Wesselmann’s most celebrated subject matter. This female nude is composed of layers of saturated painted paper placed on a deep cobalt blue ground, while her face remains featureless but for a ruby Mae West smile. Originally conceived as a study for his cut-out nude screenprints on vinyl, Cut-Out Nude Study can also be seen as a precursor to Wesselmann’s innovative cut-out steel works of nude women, begun in 1984. The erasure of facial features is characteristic of Wesselmann’s witty, transgressive works, in which the nude body functions as a cipher for his formalist preoccupations with simplicity of form, flatness and hard-edged fields of color.

In this regard, Cut-Out Nude Study is in direct lineage with Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude III, 1952, and indeed Matisse figured a great source of inspiration for Wesselmann in his focus on the female nude and turn to decorative paper cutouts. Mirroring Matisse’s approach to structure, Wesselmann uses the cut-out to unite the crispness of the drawn line with the power of pure color. Ultimately, Cut-Out Nude Study recalls Matisse’s famous vision of his practice: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity…an art which could be for every mental worker…a soothing, calming influence on the mind” (Henri Matisse, Notes of a Painter, Paris, 1908, p. 52). Blending formalist hyperrealism with a Pop Art attitude, Cut-Out Nude Study is a paradigmatic example of Wesselmann’s exceptional oeuvre.