Fujifilm, 50 ans de présence en Europe

Fujifilm, 50 ans de présence en Europe : 

croissance durable et reconversion réussie dans plusieurs domaines

Cette année marque le 50è anniversaire de la présence de Fujifilm en Europe. À partir de son activité initiale de pellicules photographiques, l'entreprise s'est diversifiée pour devenir une société leader mondial dans de nombreux champs d'application. Le 7 juillet 1966, Fuji Photo Films Europe Gmbh était enregistré au registre du commerce de la ville de Düsseldorf. Son développement s'est d'abord poursuivie au Royaume-Uni en 1976, puis sur tout le continent avec des sites de production et des bureaux commerciaux. Aujourd'hui, l'entreprise est dotée d'un large réseau à travers l'Europe.

Fujifilm s'est d'abord fait connaître en tant que fabricant de pellicules photo. Ses célèbres boites de films vertes était en vente dans le monde entier et le dirigeable vert Fujifilm était devenu une scène familière lors des événements sportifs. Cependant, en 2000, le marché des films photo s'est écroulé alors que la photographie numérique prenait son envol. Fujifilm a relevé le défi avec, à la clé, une transformation commerciale au succès remarquable. La société n'a pas  seulement survécu, elle s'est développée et diversifiée dans de nombreuses industries.

Aujourd'hui, le commerce traditionnel de pellicules photographiques représente moins de 1 % des bénéfices de Fujifilm. Au niveau international, l'entreprise est présente dans trois domaines principaux : Les solutions d'imagerie avec les équipements d'optique de pointe ainsi que les appareils photos, les matériaux et systèmes d'impression photo, les solutions d'information, où Fujifilm a une forte présence dans la santé, les systèmes graphiques, les matériaux pour écrans plats, les supports d'enregistrement, l'inspection industrielle et autres technologies, et les solutions de gestion documentaire, où l'entreprise fournit des imprimantes et produits connexes, production et autres services.

Le groupe Fujifilm est actif dans sept domaines d'activité à travers l'Europe, dont la santé, les systèmes graphiques, les supports d'enregistrement et les technologies photographiques. Fujifilm dispose de sept sites de production principaux dans la région, pour les plaques CTP, le papier couleur, les produits chimiques, mes encres, mes colorants pour le jet d'encre, les toners, les matériaux électroniques pour semi-conducteurs et les produits bio-pharmaceutiques. Le siège européen est basé à Düsseldorf. Le groupe compte une cinquantaine d'entités à travers l'Europe et emploie près de 5 000 personnes.

Investissement pour le développement futur

Fujifilm investit chaque année environ sept pour cent de son chiffre d'affaires consolidé dans la recherche et le développement en se focalisant sur les  domaines d'activités à fort potentiel. La laboratoire de recherche avancée Fujifilm, ouvert en 2006 à Tokyo, représente l'unité de R&D stratégique qui pilote l'ensemble des capacités technologiques du groupe. Cette structure rassemble scientifiques et ingénieurs, sous la forme d'équipes de recherche internationales, qui travaillent sur la synthèse organique, les micro-revêtements multicouches, le micro-usinage de précision, le laser, l'impression et le traitement d'images.

Le Laboratoire de recherche de Tilburg, aux Pays-Bas, est le centre R&D européen. En collaboration avec les instituts universitaires de toute l'Europe, il développe des technologies de pointe centrées sur les membranes pour la séparation de gaz, les membranes échangeuses d'ions et les peptides recombinants. Le nouvel Open Innovation Hub à Tilburg stimule la co-conception sur base des technologies Fujifilm.

Succès dans de nombreux domaines

Fujifilm a remporté de nombreux succès et va continuer dans cette voie. Les fameux appareils photo de la série X, aux multiples récompenses prestigieuses, en sont un exemple. Les appareils Instax Fujifilm produisent des photos instantanées d'un simple clics, ils ont créé une nouvelle tendance mondiale. Beaucoup de gens se font une joie d'imprimer des photos prises avec leur smartphone, Les logiciels Fujifilm simplifie cette opération. L'entreprise fournit également des technologies de pointe pour les industries graphique. En tant que leader dans l'impression jet d'encre, elle sera l'un des principaux exposants de systèmes graphiques au salon Drupa. Fujifilm est pionnier dans le domaine de l'imagerie diagnostique pour les institutions médicales et a été un partenaire fiable pour les hôpitaux et les médecins depuis longtemps, tout en développant son offre dans le secteur de la santé.

Takaaki Kurose, Président de FUJIFILM Europe, explique : "La transition de fabriquant de pellicule photographique vers une entreprise high-tech globale a été possible parce que nous avons développé une stratégie de croissance solide et investissons énormément dans la R&D en nous appuyant sur une richesse technologique accumulée au fil des années. Nous fournissons la meilleure technologie disponible dans des domaines d'activité où nous pouvons sommes présents. Notre engagement envers l'innovation en est la garantie. L'Europe est un axe important pour nous, comme en témoigne notre Laboratoire de recherche de Tilburg aux Pays-Bas et l'Open Innovation Hub récemment créé.”

FUJIFILM EUROPE

www.fujifilm.eu

Richard Kalina @ Lennon, Weinberg Gallery, NYC - Panamax

Richard Kalina: Panamax 

Lennon, Weinberg Gallery, New York 

February 18 – March 26, 2016 

RICHARD KALINA

Cyrex 1, 2015 

40 x 40”, collage, acrylic, flashe on linen

© Richard Kalina, courtesy the artist and Lennon, Weinberg

RICHARD KALINA

Utilion 2, 2015

48 x 48”, collage, acrylic, flashe on linen

© Richard Kalina, courtesy the artist and Lennon, Weinberg

Lennon, Weinberg has been exhibiting the work of Richard Kalina since 1992. While certain aspects of the work remain the same – constructing paintings with a unique process of collage along with his sense of color – the works in this exhibition show Richard Kalina creating an entirely interconnected body of work. It’s a different way of improvising within systems of his own invention that has long governed the creative logic of his work.

The gallery asked Richard Kalina to provide some insight into his intentions for the new work and have included his statement in the booklet published to accompany the show. In his own words:

The paintings are built from a toolkit of components – rearranged differently in each work or group of works: panels, bars, circles, complex linear connectors, and a variety of grounds. Certain things were carried over from my previous paintings – most of the paintings in the show are constructed, as they were in the past, from painted rice paper layered and collaged on canvas. It is a complicated and rather tedious process but it allows for a particular matte surface and transparent color (paired with plaster-like whites and blacks) that is very difficult to achieve in any other way. There is also a governing logic common to much of my earlier paintings – a way of putting a rational order on sets of intuitive processes. In this case, the number of the internal panels matches the number of the color bars (and no color bar repeats) and the circles always come in two of each color. But there are some major variations. A number of the works are monochromatic or bichromatic and are painted in oil on linen. In these works the focus is on the overall border of the forms rather than on the internal divisions. There are seven distinct series within the larger group.

Panamax, by the way, is the term for the size limits for ships travelling through the Panama Canal. Those constraints have shaped the dimensions and design of the different ships that now traverse the canal. The rules that Richard Kalina has imposed on this particular cycle of work have had a similar effect in determining the resulting paintings.

RICHARD KALINA was born in 1946 and began showing his work in New York and elsewhere in 1969. His works are included in many museum collections including the Arkansas Art Center, Grey Art Gallery, Guild Hall Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, National Museum of American Art, Norton Gallery, Parrish Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Rutgers University Art Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum and Yale University Art Gallery. Richard Kalina is a respected art critic, a member of the National Academy and a Professor of Art at Fordham University in New York, where he teaches studio art and art history.

LENNON, WEINBERG

514 West 25 Street, New York, NY 10001

www.lennonweinberg

James Welling: Choreograph, Regen Projects, Los Angeles

James Welling: Choreograph

Regen Projects, Los Angeles

February 19 – March 26, 2016

Regen Projects presents an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles-based artist JAMES WELLING. Choreograph features James Welling’s most recent series of inkjet prints that incorporate dance, architecture, and landscape in each image. This marks the artist’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.

After seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform in 1970, James Welling studied dance briefly at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1971 he stopped dancing to attend the California Institute of the Arts, where he concentrated on photography. Choreograph marks James Welling’s return to dance, albeit through photographic imagery.

To create these works James Welling photographed over a dozen dance companies in New York, Philadelphia, Ottawa, and Los Angeles. The dance photographs were then merged with photographs of architecture (buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, and Paul Rudolph) and landscape imagery (western Connecticut, southern Florida, and Switzerland) in Photoshop’s fundamental red, green, and blue color channels, which are basic to all color photographs. The resulting electronic files were altered by the artist using Photoshop’s Hue and Saturation layers to create complicated, multi-hued photographs, which were then printed on rag paper using a 10 color Epson Stylus Pro 9900 inkjet printer.

About Choreograph James Welling writes:

Since 2005 I have been making photographs by tinkering with trichromatic color. In Choreograph I’m putting different images into the trichromatic red, green and blue color channels of Photoshop to produce some very strange looking pictures. (Normative color photographs place the same image into the color channels.) Each Choreograph is a unique solution to the problem of balancing this strange amalgam of superimposed bodies, buildings and open spaces with the most unexpected color combinations that arise from this way of working.

Writing on Choreograph in Artforum in February 2016, art historian Robert Slifkin notes:

Welling has repeatedly found ways to use photography’s vital lexicon to reinterpret – and literally remediate – certain contested artistic operations such as painterly gesture, the associative power of landscape, and the sensuous investigation of color. 

For his exhibition at Regen Projects, James Welling collaborates on the exhibition design with Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee. 

JAMES WELLING (b. 1951 in Hartford, CT) studied at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh before receiving both his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. He lives and works in Los Angeles where he is a professor and area head of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has taught since 1995.

James Welling’s work has been the subject of numerous international solo exhibitions. Recent shows include the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Art Institute of Chicago (both 2015). In 2013 a major survey exhibition, Monograph, traveled from the Cincinnati Museum of Art to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Other museum shows include the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMASS Amherst (2013); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut (2012); Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota (2010); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (both 2002); Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (1999); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland (both 1998). In 2000, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, organized a major survey of Welling’s work, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Works by the artist are included in prominent museum collections worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Vancouver Art Gallery; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards such as the 2014 International Center of Photography Infinity Award and will receive the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award from Woodbury University, California in 2016.

REGEN PROJECTS

6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038

www.regenprojects.com

Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
March 7 - July 31, 2016

Unknown, French. Marius Bourotte, 1929. 

Gelatin silver print with applied color. 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, 

through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1996

Since the earliest days of the medium, photographs have been used for criminal investigation and evidence gathering, to record crime scenes, to identify suspects and abet their capture, and to report events to the public. Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning March 7, explores the multifaceted intersections between photography and crime, from 19th-century "rogues' galleries" to work by contemporary artists inspired by criminal transgression. The installation will feature some 70 works, drawn entirely from the Met collection, ranging from the 1850s to the present.

Among the highlights of the installation will be Alexander Gardner's documentation of the events following the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as rare forensic photographs by Alphonse Bertillon, the French criminologist who created the system of criminal identification that gave rise to the modern mug shot. Also on display will be a vivid selection of vintage news photographs related to cases both obscure and notorious, such as a study of John Dillinger's feet in a Chicago morgue in 1934; Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963; and Patty Hearst captured by bank surveillance cameras in 1974. 

In addition to exploring photography's evidentiary uses, the exhibition will feature work by artists who have drawn inspiration from the criminal underworld, including Richard Avedon, Larry Clark, Walker Evans, John Gutmann, Andy Warhol, and Weegee.

Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play is organized by a team in the Department of Photographs that includes Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in Charge; Doug Eklund, Curator; Mia Fineman, Associate Curator; and Beth Saunders, Curatorial Assistant. Exhibition design is by Brian Butterfield, Senior Exhibition Designer; graphics are by Constance Norkin, Graphic Design Manager; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Museum's Design Department.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028
www.metmuseum.org

Nicholas Hlobo @ Lehmann Maupin, New York

Nicholas Hlobo 

Lehmann Maupin, New York

February 24 - April 17, 2016

NICHOLAS HLOBO

igqabhuk 'imiphunga, 2016,

ribbons and leather on Belgian linen canvas,

47.2 x 35.4 x 1.9 inches

120 x 90 x 5 cm

Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

Lehmann Maupin announces its inaugural exhibition for South African artist, Nicholas Hlobo. Presenting both mixed media on canvas paintings as well as leather and wood sculptures, Hlobo’s newest body of work makes use of the migratory patterns of eels as a point of departure, and reconsiders as allegory the personal transformation necessary to his own artistic journey. Centered around organic and corporeal imagery, the exhibition elaborates on recurring themes of the artist’s concern with beauty, pain, pleasure, and cycles of life.

Hlobo (pronounced sloh-boh) is known for his intricate, sprawling installations that incorporate organic sculptures, performance, work on paper, and video installations.  He employs tactile materials such as ribbon, leather, wood and rubber, which he often melds and weaves to create his two- and three- dimensional works. By incorporating influences from his ethnic and cultural background such as the Xhosa language and references to traditional craft, ritual, sexual orientation, gender, and nationality into his works, Hlobo addresss the constant shifting and subjective nature inherent in these identifiers. The eradication of legalized discrimination and segregation that came with the end of Apartheid in 1994 saw Hlobo and his peers empowered to voice their views under the protection of new laws. This fundamental right to challenge political and societal issues has been exercised and articulated at the core of Hlobo’s work in the years since.

In his first solo gallery show in New York, Hlobo will present a number of new works inspired by the migratory patterns of eels. Cut and stitched together, and woven with leather, the works on canvas (referred to by the artist as paintings) are given greater dimensionality through handmade impressions, which echo the sculptures made of a tree trunk and stump embellished with leather. Hlobo also incorporates found objects into his works. In the work Umkhokeli, which roughly translates to “leader” or “master,” he uses a vintage leather flagpole holster, sewn into tentacle-like ribbon embroidery and fashions it with a leather phallus in place of a flag,

For the artist, the mating ritual of eels is ripe with metaphor. The animals spend the majority of their solitary lives near the shoreline, but swim thousands of miles to the deep ocean when biologically called to spawn, and, ultimately die after their final progenerative act. It is the eels’ abandonment of familiar territory for the ocean’s unknown depths that resonates with Hlobo; the voyage of the eels is symbolic of the existential notions of transformation in the artist’s personal creative journey that is guided by the subconscious. The belief in artistic instinct is essential to Hlobo, who begins production of any piece free from preconception or planned aesthetic result.

Concurrent with his exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, Hlobo’s work will also be included in several major museum shows including the solo exhibition, Imilonji Yembali (Melodies of History) at Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands, on view from February 13-May 16, 2016; as well as group exhibitions, History, Art, Architecture and Design from the 80s to Now, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, on view through March 7, 2016; and Energy and Process, Tate Modern, London, on long term exhibition.

NICHOLAS HLOBO (b. 1975, Cape Town, South Africa) received a Fine Art degree from Johannesburg’s Technikon Witwatersrand in 2002. Hlobo’s exhibition history includes solo exhibitions at Locust Project, Miami (2013); National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2011); Savannah College of Art and Design, Lacoste, France (2010); Tate Modern, London (2008); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2008); and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2007). He has participated in several international biennials and notable group exhibitions including The Divine Comedy, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2014); 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012); 54th Venice Biennale (2011); La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Liverpool Biennial (2010); Guangzhou Triennial, China (2008); and Flow at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2008). Hlobo’s work is included in numerous collections including the South African National Art Gallery, Cape Town; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; Tate Modern, London; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The artist lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Lehmann Maupin

201 Chrystie Street, New York

www.lehmannmaupin.com

Art Paris Art Fair 2016 : Des artistes femme à l'honneur

Art Paris Art Fair 2016

Des artistes femme à l'honneur

Grand Palais, Paris

31 mars - 3 avril 2016

Art Paris Art Fair 2016 accueille un grand nombre d’artistes femmes et explore différents aspects de la création féminine aussi bien historique que contemporaine. On pourra découvrir ou re-découvrir les œuvres d'artistes femmes parmi lesquelles :

Geneviève Claisse

Geneviève Claisse, née en 1935 et parente d'Auguste Herbin, fait l'objet de deux accrochages. L'un à la Galerie Wagner orchestre un dialogue entre cette figure historique de l'abstraction géométrique et de jeunes artistes. L'autre monographique à la Galerie Fleury montre un ensemble de compositions picturales abstraites de 1960 à aujourd'hui.

Geneviève Claisse, ADN, 1972

© Geneviève Claisse

Claudine Drai

La galerie 111 (Paris) met en scène les tableaux sculptures de l’artiste française Claudine Drai, remarquée récemment à la fondation Maeght, faits de papiers de soie froissés avec lesquels elle crée des personnages qu’elle juxtapose dans des assemblages évoquant un monde diaphane peuplé de présences.

Claudine Drai, Sans titre, 2015

© Claudine Drai

Janet Biggs et Dana Hoey

S’écartant des habituelles questions de genre ou du féminisme classique, la galerie Analix Forever (Genève) propose une exposition de deux artistes américaines confirmées Janet Biggs et Dana Hoey dont les œuvres photographiques et vidéos dégagent une énergie créatrice puissante. L’environnement est également une préoccupation partagée par les deux artistes, qui dialoguent, interagissent, développent des théories communes sur leur approche distincte mais parallèle de cette énergie de femme, de vie et de création qui fait la sève de leur travail.

Janet Biggs, Arctic Bang, 2011

© Janet Biggs

Carmen Perrin

Exposée en solo show par la Galerie Bob Gysin (Zürich), Carmen Perrin a bénéficié récemment d’une grande exposition rétrospective à la Maison de l’Amérique latine de Paris. Cette artiste suisse d’origine bolivienne, née en 1953, poursuit une recherche qui articule étroitement la pratique de la sculpture et celle du dessin. Pour Art Paris Art Fair, elle présente un ensemble de sculptures et de dessins « tracé tourné » réalisés dans les années 2000.

Carmen Perrin, Les cahiers d'Alberto (Années 60), 2015

© Carmen Perrin

Katinka Lampe

Dans une veine figurative, les portraits d’enfants ou d’adolescents de la peintre hollandaise Katinka Lampe (née en 1963) font l’objet d’une exposition personnelle à la galerie des Filles du Calvaire : des visages sans histoire représentés de trois-quarts, de face, en buste se détachent de grands fonds colorés, suggérant une quête désespérée vers un ailleurs inatteignable.

Katinka Lampe, Untitled 2100152, 2015

© Katinka Lampe

Newsha Tavakolian

Les jeunes talents du Moyen Orient s'illustrent à la Galerie Silk Road (Téhéran) à travers les œuvres photographiques de Shadi Ghadirian, Newsha Tavakolian et Tahmineh Monzavi.

Newsha Tavakolian, Serie : The Look, 2016

© Newsha Tavakolian

Wura-Natasha Ogunji

La 50 golborne gallery (Londres) met en avant la création féminine africaine avec Wura-Natasha Ogunji ou Joana Choumali. Wura-Natasha Ogunji est une artiste qui travaille sur différents supports, aussi bien des broderies sur tissus que des vidéos dans lesquelles elle se met en scène.

Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Yemaya y Ochun, 2015

© Wura-Natasha Ogunji

Tom Wesselmann: Collages 1959-1964 - David Zwirner, London

Tom Wesselmann: Collages 1959-1964
David Zwirner, London
Through March 24, 2016

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of collages by American artist TOM WESSELMANN at the gallery's London location. Organized in collaboration with The Estate of Tom Wesselmann, the exhibition presents over 30 works produced between 1959 and 1964–a significant period spanning the artist's early career and his emergence as a leading figure of Pop Art.

Since the mid-1960s, Tom Wesselmann's oeuvre has been synonymous with the bold, graphic, and large-scale imagery of Pop Art. On view at the gallery, his intimate, handwrought collages of the late 1950s and early 1960s reveal the germination of his iconic style, and attest to his lifelong interest in depicting still lifes, interiors, landscapes, and female nudes.

Tom Wesselmann first explored the medium of collage in 1959, during his final year as an art student at The Cooper Union School of Art, New York, and it remained central to his practice throughout the early 1960s. Part of a generation of artists that reacted against the dominant action-oriented, gestural style of Abstract Expressionism, Tom Wesselmann took interest in quotidian, figurative, and popular subject matter, as well as the representational and graphic qualities afforded by collage. Employing found materials culled from urban detritus and popular media such as postcards, wallpaper, stickers, and fabric, Wesselmann executed several discrete but related series of collages that variously depict figures (both anonymous and known), interiors, and still lifes. Formally, the works relate to early modernist collage and assemblage techniques and practices and, in their subject matter, make numerous art historical references to the works of Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Wassily Kandinsky, and Hans Memling, among other artists. In his later collages, representations of contemporary life and consumer goods become more prominent, evolving into the large-scale Pop Art paintings for which Wesselmann became recognized.

Among the works on view are several significant examples of his "Portrait Collages," 1959-1960, the first group of collages executed by the artist. Characterized by depictions of one or two female figures seated in interior spaces and rendered in diverse materials including leaves, wallpaper, paint, and wood, the series makes frequent allusions to works by Old Masters, as well as contemporary artists, such as Willem de Kooning and other Abstract Expressionists. These first iterations of collage, in particular, are marked by dynamic patterning, idiosyncratic material juxtapositions, flattened forms, and rich, vibrant color that would remain consistent features of his work throughout his career.

Also included in the exhibition are a number of works from Tom Wesselmann's "Little Great American Nudes" series, a pivotal body of work begun in 1961 that led directly to the development of his larger-scale "Great American Nudes," 1961-1973, for which he gained art-world acclaim, and of which the first example, Great American Nude #1, will be on view.

Begun in 1962, Tom Wesselmann's "Little Still Life" series demonstrates the artist's increasing interest in depicting contemporary, popular subject matter such as food, articles of clothing, and flowers, which he typically represented in tabletop displays. Like his nudes, this series increased greatly in scale, as evidenced in his 1963 Still Life #29–one of the artist’s first large-scale still lifes, of which only a small number exist (one example is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). As Marco Livingstone has remarked regarding the artist's collages, "Wesselmann was able not only to make art that reflected his identity and the circumstances of his life, but also to expand on the advances made by the previous generation towards the establishment of an art that could be defined as specifically American."¹

¹Marco Livingstone, "Small Early Collages," in Tom Wesselmann: A Retrospective Survey 1969-1992. Exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Art Life Ltd., 1993), p. 39.

Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004) is well known for his collages, paintings, and sculptures depicting still lifes, landscapes, and nudes. He attended The Cooper Union School of Art, New York, from 1956-1959, and was co-founder, with artists Marcus Ratliff and Jim Dine, of the influential Judson Gallery, New York (which operated from 1957 to the late 1960s). In the 1960s, he emerged as a leading figure of Pop Art.

Tom Wesselmann's works are included in numerous museum collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Kaiser-Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo; the Nationalgalerie, Berlin; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

DAVID ZWIRNER
24 Grafton Street - London W1S 4EZ
www.davidzwirner.com