Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Private Collection, London

 

Exhibition Catalogue, Venice, Flora Bigai Arte Moderna e Contemporanea; Pietrasanta, Flora Bigai Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Tom Wesselmann, 2003, p. 45, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter and more vibrant in the original, with the yellow in the upper right quadrant tending more to light orange and the blue in the bottom third of the composition more to electric cobalt. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection of the extreme left and right overturn edges reveals several fine, stable tension cracks. There is a faint vertical rub mark to the central section of the left extreme edge. There is a minute indentation to the canvas in the upper right quadrant to the red passage along the right extreme edge. Several minute fly spots are visible upon close inspection to the white passage in the upper right quadrant. Close examination of the blue and white paint in the lower right corner under ultraviolet light reveals several thin unobtrusive lines which fluoresce and appear to be retouching.
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Considered to be the artist's best late series, Tom Wesselmann's Sunset Nudes mark the culmination of a life time's dedication to exploring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction in art. H𒐪is investigation began in the early 1960s when, buoyed by the work of Henri Matisse, he turned his back on Abstract Expressionism to explore a new path visual representation that was able to combine both the assertive force of Abstract art with the contemporary relevance of figurative representation.

 

He started by simplifying compositions into bold outlines delineated by large, flat areas of colour. The series of 1960s Great American Nudes prompted by this investigation rank amongst the most iconic images of all American Pop art, an🌜d offer a unique take on the crossover between high art and low culture. Wesselmann in these works surrounded the pink, supine bodies of his nudes with collaged commercial products and Matisse-ean scraps of patter𒆙ned carpet. This juxtaposition of one of the oldest motifs in Western art with the trappings of contemporary consumerism was a breakthrough and he continued the series throughout the decade.  

 

Created more than four decades later during the twilight years of his career, the Sunset Nudes were the artist's final and crowning achievement. The suavely handled formal composition of the present work generates a potent and playful Pop nostalgia, in which rounded, near abstract shapes play off one another in a vibrant ebb and flow of contours across the composition. The assured confidence of Wesselmann's vision and his mastery over the subject matter are strongly in evidence here in complex, linear framework of abstract, flat colour-planes that converges into a composition of great aesthetic force and physical presence.  Like Matisse's late blue paper cut-outs of female nudes, the dissonant juxtaposition between shapes here similarly breaks down the picture surface and exaggerates its ultimate flatness. And yet the composition upholds an overall sense of visual unity through the relational hierarchy of the various elements.ﷺ

 

Depicting a reclining nude adorned blossoms and fruit and framed against a sunset and, this work stands as a monument to the artist's career-long homage to Matisse. Wesselmann, who died unexpectedl🌟y, didn't know that these paintings were to be his last; but he would have been confident that they are without question among his best.