Beschreibung:

Tom Wesselmann Study for Bedroom Painting #2 1967 Oil on canvas. 8 x 10 in. (20.4 x 25.8 cm). Signed, titled and dated “Wesselmann Study for Bedroom Painting #2, 1967” on the reverse.
Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York; Private collection, New York; Vivian Horan Fine Art, New York; Private collection, New York Catalogue Essay Tom Wesselmann developed into one of America’s leading Pop Artist’s of the 20th century, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of the classical representations of the nude, still life and landscape. Wesselmann’s art, defined by its flat forms and intense color fields, was able to retain and highlight the artist’s own unique language of images that defined not only a critical era in the history of art but pushed the boundaries of conography, Pop aesthetic and representation into the next generation of art. Wesselmann worked constantly on the Bedroom Painting series, in which elements of his previous series’ such as the Great American Nude, Still Lifes and Seascapes were juxtaposed. With these works the artist began to concentrate on a few details of the figure such as hands, feet, and breasts, surrounded by flowers and objects. The Bedroom Paintings shifted the focus and scale of the attendant objects around a nude; these objects are small in relation to the nude, but become major, even dominant elements when the central element is a body part. By radically enlarging the still life elements in relation to the composition of the nude, Wesselmann intended these works to be confrontational, yet beautiful, expressions of the new openness and honesty about sexual matters that came to be associated with the 1960s. Read More Artist Bio 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. View More Works