Thomas K. Wesselmann (February 23, 1931 – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture.

[3] After graduation, Wesselmann became one of the founding members of the Judson Gallery, along with Marc Ratliff and Jim Dine, also from Cincinnati, who had just arrived in New York.

Wesselmann's first solo show was held there later that year, representing both the large and small Great American Nude collages.

About the same time, Ivan Karp of the Leo Castelli Gallery put Wesselmann in touch with several collectors and talked to him about Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist’s works.

In As Henry Geldzahler observed: "About a year and a half ago I saw the works of Wesselmann..., Warhol, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein in their studios (it was more or less July 1961).

[9] The Sidney Janis Gallery held the New Realists exhibition in November 1962, which included works by the American artists Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, George Segal, and Andy Warhol; and Europeans such as Arman, Enrico Baj, Christo, Yves Klein, Tano Festa, Mimmo Rotella, Jean Tinguely, and Mario Schifano.

In Still Life #28 he included a television set that was turned on, "interested in the competitive demands that a TV, with moving images and giving off light and sound, can make on painted portions".

This was an installation of a large supermarket where Pop works (Warhol's Campbell's Soup, Watts's colored wax eggs etc.)

He worked constantly on the Bedroom Painting series, in which elements of the Great American Nude, Still Lifes and Seascapes were juxtaposed.

With these works Wesselmann began to concentrate on a few details of the figure such as hands, feet, and breasts, surrounded by flowers and objects.

[17] Wesselmann made Still Life #59, five panels that form a large, complex dimensional, freestanding painting: here too the elements are enlarged, and part of a telephone can be seen.

A nail-polish bottle is tipped up on one side, and there is a vase of roses with a crumpled handkerchief next to it, and the framed portrait of a woman, actress Mary Tyler Moore, whom Wesselmann considered as the ideal prototype girlfriend.

Still Life #60 appeared in 1974: the monumental outline, almost 26 feet (7.9 m) long, of the sunglasses acts as a frame for the lipstick, nail polish and jewelry; a microcosm of contemporary femininity that Wesselmann took to the level of gigantism.

But of course the incontrovertible sensuality of Wesselmann's nudes was constantly accompanied by an ironic guiding thread that was clearly revealed in the artist's own words: “Painting, sex, and humor are the most important things in my life.

In these works he revised the formal construction of the composition, which was now cut by a diagonal, with one entire section being taken up by a woman's face in the very near foreground.

Wesselmann's metal works continued to go through a constant metamorphosis: My Black Belt (1990), a seventies subject,[further explanation needed] acquired a new vivacity that forcefully defined space in the new medium.

The Drawing Society produced a video directed by Paul Cummings, in which Wesselmann makes a portrait of a model and a work in aluminum.

This is what happened: in 1984 I started making steel and aluminum cut-out figures... One day I got muddled up with the remnants and I was struck by the infinite variety of abstract possibilities.

[21] In this new abstract format Wesselmann preferred a random approach, and made compositions in which the metal cut-outs resembled gestural brushstrokes.

“[They constitute] an unexpected but highly satisfying nostalgic return to a youthful episode in the very midst of one of the most radical changes of style in Wesselmann’s career.

Wesselmann acknowledged the influence of Mondrian by choosing titles that recall the earlier painter's works: New York City Beauty (2001).

This coincided with the release of a new monograph on the artist, written by John Wilmerding and published by Rizzoli, Tom Wesselmann, His Voice and Vision.

Wesselmann was a self-described fan of country music,[16]: 102  and sometimes incorporated operating radios, TVs, or other sound elements into his works.

[16]: 96 : 103  A retrospective show Tom Wesselmann und die Pop Art : pictures on the wall of your heart (2008–2009) at Städtische Galerie in Ravensburg, Germany featured music recordings of his band, courtesy of his estate.