Pop artist Tom Wesselmann, 73; known for nudes, still lifes

December 21, 2004|Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Tom Wesselmann, a Pop artist best known for his modern take on the reclining female nude, died Friday at New York University Medical Center of complications after heart surgery. He was 73.

Mr. Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati in 1931. He was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and afterward studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In 1956 he moved to New York to attend the Cooper Union School of the Arts.

By the late 1950s, Mr. Wesselmann was making large collages from magazine clippings and found objects, usually combined with an image of a female nude.

Mr. 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, Mr. 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.

He leaves his wife, Claire, daughters Kate and Jenny, and a son, Lane, all of New York.