Artwork poster Tom Wesselman ‘Mouth #11’ (Sold)
Offset litography poster of Tom Wesselman’s ‘Mouth #11’ for his Exhibiion in 1967 in the Dallas Museum of Art. This poster is printed in Milan by Arti Grafiche Ricordi. The poster is framed in a nice lipstick red frame, underlining the female mouth with cigarette, depicted by American painter and sculptor Tom Wesselmann, one of the founding fathers of Pop Art. The Mouth paintings, an extension of his Great American Nude series are among Wesselmanns most sought after works. Wesselmann placed young female nudes in vibrantly rendered settings while abstractiging the figural form and, by the mid sixties, he focused on specific parts of the body. This led tot he Mouth series in 1965. He was also fascinated by cigarettes and smoke. Mouth #11 was the first work that combined both. The poster is in good condition, the frame misses a few small chips of paint.
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Frame dimensions:
W: 86 cm / 91 cm
D: 1mm / 2 cm
H: 60 cm / 66 cm
Blade dimensions:
W: 86 cm
H: 60 cm
Weight: approx. 1 kilo.
Material: paper, ink, wooden frame
Together with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselman was one of the most important American Pop artists of the 1960’s. He moved away from the Abstract Expressionism from celebrated artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning & Cy Twombly. He mixed classical representations of the nude, still life and landscapes with everyday objects and printed advertisments. “The prime mission of my art, in the beginning, and continuing still,” said Wesselmann, “Is to make figurative art as exciting as abstract art.”
Wesselmann served in the US Army during the Korean War where he was a photographer and started drawing cartoons about his experiences in Korea. He later studied art at Cooper Union in New York, where he met his wife and longtime muse, Claire Selley. He created early collages and assemblage paintings that used found objects and gadgets.
Living in Brooklyn, Wesselmann supported himself through cartoons and worked with the Judson Gallery. He later taught art and math, while developing his distinctive style. His Great American Nude series (1961–73) combined sensual female figures with references to art history and American advertising. In the late 1960s, he created intimate Bedroom Paintings that focused on body parts and everyday bedroom objects. His Mouth series focused on female lips and mouths, with ‘Mouth #14 (Marilyn)’ refering to Marilyn Monroe’s luscious lips, being the most famous work from this series.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Wesselmann worked on Standing Still Life paintings, monumental works that shaped canvases to depict common objects. He later shifted to sculptural art, creating large-scale abstract works using steel and aluminum. His body of works was always evolving into new directions and crossing boundaries, contrary to Andy Warhol or Lichtenstein who stayed working more or less always in the same style. This might be one of the reasons why Wesselmann never became as famous as the two other founding fathers of pop art. When comparing prices, a 6,4 million euro for Great American Nude No. 48 (1963), his most expensive work at an 2008 auction at Sotheby’s is a real bargain, compared to the other two. Wesselmann died in 2004. The fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris held a big retro-spective exposition on his work in 2024 and early 2025, bringing together over 150 works from all over the world.
