Tom Wesselmann - After Matisse

Description

Catalog published following the eponymous exhibitions at Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, in 2022 and Musée Matisse, Nice, in 2023.

The major influence of Henri Matisse's work on the body of work of one of the leading exponents of American Pop Art.

With the "Great American Nudes" series of the 1960s, Tom Wesselmann transformed the Matissian odalisque into a pop icon. Subsequently, Matisse's work remained a central reference for him in his search for visual efficiency and image saturation.

Through a selection of forty-one works, Tom Wesselmann. After Matisse retraces this admiration for the artist, expressed in many ways, from his first collages in 1959 to his ultimate works, the "Sunset Nudes" of the 2000s. They testify to different modes of appropriation of Matisse's work: work after, direct quotation or, more structurally, the Matissian conception of color and surface.

This catalog, showing Wesselmann in the studio, provides an insight into his elaborate technique of collage or volume drawing, which always attaches great importance to the question of scale, from the smallest formats to vast realizations. Four major ensembles testify to the dialogue between this great American pop artist and Henri Matisse: the collages, the "Great American Nudes", the "Steel Drawings" and the "Sunset Nudes". The book contains essays by Gail Stavitsky and Claudine G