Embossed Nude

Tom Wesselmann had a meteoric rise to Pop Art eminence in the 1960s. It was during his time in the US army in the 1950s that he became interested in drawing adopting the medium of cartoon. In 1956 he was accepted to Cooper Union, Manhattan, and the following year he realised that a career as an artist, rather than a cartoonist, beckoned however his early foray into the world of cartoon was undoubtedly a formative one. Embossed Nude no. 14 illustrates the iconic imagery conjured up with ease by Wesselmann. It was created in the wake of his seminal work, Great American Nude (1961), and is the perfect example of his strikingly individual and highly stylised approach to the female nude, which, along with still lives, was Wesselmann's most recognizable and best-loved subject matter.