Tom Wesselmann – Monica Reclining

Description

Tom Wesselmann, Monica Reclining is a small intimate nude portrait of Monica, Tom’s chief muse.  This print is a one-of-a-kind hand-watercolored etching on wove paper from the edition in black and white of 50. The piece is signed and numbered, but it remains a unique watercolor.  The image dimensions are 6 x 8 inches, and the paper dimensions are 15 x 17 inches.  The framed dimensions are 16 x 18 inches.

Tom Wesselmann was an American Pop artist best known for his collages, sculptures, and screenprints that stylized the female figure. Often isolating segments of the body—red lips with a cigarette, a single nipple, or a stylish shoe—his artworks aim was to seize a viewer’s attention. “The prime mission of my art, in the beginning, and continuing still, is to make figurative art as exciting as abstract art,” he once said of his work.

“New York lit him on fire,” said Wesselmann’s second wife, Claire—a fellow Cooper Union student and model for her husband—about the city’s creative scene at that time. Having presumed he would continue cartoon work, Wesselmann was inspired by innovative exhibitions to go in a new direction and worked as a collagist, having initial showings at the Tanager and Green galleries by the early ’60s.

He began to create art that incorporated commonplace real-world items with historical portraiture, often focusing on a reclining female nude. Hence he became known for his “Great American Nude” series, linked to more classical works. Due to his particular aesthetic, he was seen, along with figures like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as one of the purveyors of Pop Art, though Wesselmann stated that he didn’t care for the term. Later in the decade his pieces were exhibited in Europe and Brazil.

Tom Wesselmann, Monica Reclining

Monica Reclining by Tom Wesselmann