Pop Artist Tom Wesselmann Dies at 73
Posted: December 21st, 2004, 12:08 pm
NEW YORK - Tom Wesselmann, a Pop artist best known for his modern take on the reclining female nude, has died at age 73.
Wesselmann died Friday at New York University Medical Center of complications after heart surgery, said Emilio Steinberger of the Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea, where Wesselmann had a show last year.
Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati in 1931 and was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. Afterward, he studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, then moved to New York in 1956 to attend the Cooper Union School of the Arts.
By the late 1950s, he was making large collages from magazine clippings and found objects, usually combined with an image of a female nude.
Wesselmann had his first one-man show at the Tanager Gallery in New York in 1961. In 1962, he participated in the exhibition "The Figure" at the Museum of Modern Art.
In the 1960s, Wesselmann expanded on his collages in still lifes and interiors-with-nudes that often combined painted images with real objects including radios, television sets, refrigerator doors and bathroom fixtures. In his "Smokers" series of the 1970s, he focused on the female nude with a series of enormous cutout details: ruby-red lips, manicured fingernails and cigarettes. At the time of his death, he was working on a series of nudes painted in an Abstract Expressionist style.
Wesselmann is survived by his wife, Claire, daughters Kate Wesselmann and Jenny Wesselmann and a son, Lane, all of New York.
http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?52148+0+0
_________________
Honda Avancier
Wesselmann died Friday at New York University Medical Center of complications after heart surgery, said Emilio Steinberger of the Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea, where Wesselmann had a show last year.
Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati in 1931 and was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. Afterward, he studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, then moved to New York in 1956 to attend the Cooper Union School of the Arts.
By the late 1950s, he was making large collages from magazine clippings and found objects, usually combined with an image of a female nude.
Wesselmann had his first one-man show at the Tanager Gallery in New York in 1961. In 1962, he participated in the exhibition "The Figure" at the Museum of Modern Art.
In the 1960s, Wesselmann expanded on his collages in still lifes and interiors-with-nudes that often combined painted images with real objects including radios, television sets, refrigerator doors and bathroom fixtures. In his "Smokers" series of the 1970s, he focused on the female nude with a series of enormous cutout details: ruby-red lips, manicured fingernails and cigarettes. At the time of his death, he was working on a series of nudes painted in an Abstract Expressionist style.
Wesselmann is survived by his wife, Claire, daughters Kate Wesselmann and Jenny Wesselmann and a son, Lane, all of New York.
http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?52148+0+0
_________________
Honda Avancier