Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004)
Study for Great American Nude 95
Graphite and watercolour, 1967, signed and dated in pencil, on wove paper, the full sheet 116 x 147mm (6 1/4 x 5 3/4in) (framed)

Provenance:
Ex coll. Gerhard F. Reinz, The Orangerie Gallery, Cologne, Germany;
Ex coll. the artist, Otmar Alt, Germany, 1970s;
Auction, Germany July 2024;
Private collection, UK, acquired from the above.

The Authenticity of this work has been verified by the The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc., who have confirmed its inclusion in the Tom Wesselmann Digital Catalogue Raisonné (reference no. tw208b).

Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nude series, begun in 1961 and largely completed by the late 1960s, stands as one of the most recognisable bodies of work in American Pop Art. Comprising approximately one hundred sequentially numbered works, the series reinterprets the classical tradition of the female nude, echoing the Odalisques of Ingres and Matisse through the multicolour lens of contemporary 1960s American consumer culture and the era's defining sexual revolution.
With the Great American Nude Wesselmann depicts stylised, often faceless women, lounging sensually in modern domestic interiors. Their bodies are rendered in bold, flat colors with minimal modelling, emphasising their eroticised curves. The prominent lips and nipples are reduced to a mere graphic interpretation rather than realistic flesh, these ‘Great American Nudes' blend the high art references of the classical nude with disposable 'lowbrow' pop culture sources like pin-up magazines, B-Movies and advertising imagery.

The series was built upon an extensive foundation of small-scale preparatory studies on paper, intimate drawings, collages, and mixed-media works that reveal the artist's meticulous process far more vividly than the finished paintings alone. The present work, a study for his work of 1967, reveals Wesselmann’s process of abstraction and reduction. As with the majority of his studies the work is produced on a small scale, with minute focus he refines the bold contour lines and fills them with flat areas of colour, forming crisp shapes withe the intense graphic clarity seen in the finished painting.

This important series captures the era's optimism, hedonism, and the tension between tradition and modernity, making the "Great American Nude" a symbol of Pop Art's irreverent fusion of art, sex, and consumerism.