TOM WESSELMANN (Ohio, 1931-New York, 2004). "Still Life with Flowers," 1988. Liquitex on paper. Signed and dated lower right. Attached is a certificate from the Wesselmann Estate signed by Claire Wesselmann stating that it is in the archives. With stamp on the back of the Laurent Strou. of Paris. The protective methacrylate has some scratches. Measurements: 119 x 140 cm; 133 x 154 cm (frame). Just as his nudes became pop-art icons of the sixties, in his still lifes of flowers (which he produced mainly in the eighties) Tom Wesselmann revisits the history of art in a very particular way. The nods to Matisse and Fauve art are evident, while radicalizing the legacy of pop-art. He uses primary colors to break down the flowers to their most essential forms. The use of a lighthearted and naïff style in the classic genre of still life introduces biased comments on decorativism and art. Tom Wesselmann was an American pop-art painter. He was one of the last great American pop-art masters, most popular for his bold and striking female nudes. He enrolled for a degree in psychology in 1951, but the following year he was drafted for the Korean War. However, he was eventually stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. He created comic strips about military life, and later diversified his subjects.2 He left the Army (1954), resumed a career in psychology, and graduated in 1956. It was then that he moved to New York to devote himself to comics. He studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture until 1959. His first attempts as a painter, under the influence of Willem de Kooning, moved in the abstract expressionism then in vogue. In 1959 he produced his first abstract collages, but soon became interested in the figuration of Matisse, Van Gogh and Modigliani, and the following year he painted his first figurative works, including landscapes. His first solo show, at the Tanager Gallery in New York, took place in 1961. That same year he began his extensive cycle of Great American Nudes. The first were collages in small format, but the later ones were made in oil (Latin oleum oil) and with acrylic colors in large formats. In some of them he incorporated real objects. A canvas from this series, Nude No. 1, 1970, hangs in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Later, he produced series on smokers, as well as huge still lifes with elements of everyday life, such as household appliances, bottles, ice cream. He experimented with sculpture, using cut-out plates. His graphic production is extensive and covers several techniques (lithography, serigraphy, aquatint). An important anthology was dedicated to him in Japan in 1993-94. In 1980 he wrote an autobiography under the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth.