Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1931.
He studied at the Hiram College, Ohio, at the University of Cincinnati, (Psychology), at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and at The Cooper Union, New York (Graduate Certificate in Art).
Tom Wesselmann first solo exhibition with the ”Great American Nudes” took place in New York in 1961. From the sixties to his last work, the artist has been faithful to his “line”, but with interesting variations and in the seventies he became famous with the ”Still Life” series. Always in flat backgrounds and juxtapositions of color, Tom Wesselmann represented common objects of American life, such as beer boxes, radios, drink bottles, cigarette packs, fake facades of buildings, all “taken” from huge street advertising billboards. These works, compared to the ”Great American Nudes”, colder and deliberately impersonal, are examples of an artistic interpretation of the popular American consumerism. Then came the ”Smokers”, gigantic female lips with lit smoking cigarettes hanging from them. Since 1985, Tom Wesselmann used lasers to engrave his designs on aluminum plates cut and polished with colored watermarks. Of course Wesselmann's bibliography is long; his solo exhibitions number in the hundreds and his fame has spread all over the world for decades.
Tom Wesselmann died in New York, on December, 17th, 2004.
