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Curated by Alex BenrimonDavid Benrimon Fine Art is pleased to announce Steelcuts, an exhibition focused on the revolutionary works Tom Wesselmann began creating in the early 1980s. This exhibition includes a selection of impressive metal works as well as a variety of media related to their realization including paintings, prints and works on paper. Steelcuts explores Wesselmann’s pioneering use of industrial technologies to create the new medium of laser-cut wall sculpture, continuing the pop art tradition of adopting technical manufacturing processes into the art world. Wesselmann pared down his subjects to their most basic element, their lines, and laser-cut them from steel. In doing, so he created a fresh experience for the viewer, pulling two- dimensional drawings off the paper and into life, forming three-dimensional works that quite literally “pop” off the wall. Wesselmann reimagined motifs present throughout his oeuvre, creating a wonderful array of nudes, landscapes and still lives. Wesselmann pushed boundaries in both subject matter and medium, and artistically blurred the difference between drawing and sculpture. Wesselmann once said, “the challenge for an artist is always to find your own way of doing something.” Wesselmann’s innovative fusion of drawing and steel set him apart and created an eternal legacy. TOM WESSELMANN: STEELCUTSThe Fuller Building 41 East 57th Street, Second Floor New York, NY 10022 212-628-1600 • info@benrimon.com • www.davidbenrimon.com © 2019, David Benrimon Fine Art LLC *Special thanks to Alan Cristea Gallery, London 4Biography | 8 Unique Steelcuts | 10 Edition Steelcuts | 18 Works on paper | 36 Prints | 46 567Biography Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1931. He studied at Hiram College in Ohio from 1949-1951 before starting at the University of Cincinnati. In 1953, Wesselmann began a two-year US army enlistment, during which he began to draw cartoons. After returning to school in 1954, Wesselmann decided to pursue a career in cartooning and enrolled in the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He archived some initial success when he sold his first cartoon strips to the magazines 1000 Jokes and True. After graduation, he moved to NYC and studied fine art at Cooper Union until 1959. During his studies, he visited the MoMA and was inspired by Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and others but soon rejected action painting and the Abstract Expressionist movement as a whole. Wesselmann became one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of more classical representations of the nude, still life and landscape. His Great American Nude series became his most famous series, using flat forms and intense colors to set his art apart, and brought him widespread attention in the art world. Often isolating segments of the body in his paintings, drawings and collages, Wesselmann aimed to seize the viewer’s attention and “to make figurative art as exciting as abstract art.” In the early 1980s, Wesselmann created his first works in metal. Wesselmann used a technique for laser-cut steel found in manufacturing and appropriated it to translate his drawings into something tangible. These cutout metal drawings became a particular strength and the focus of this exhibition. Wesselmann lived and worked in NYC for more than four decades, passing away in 2004.Next >