Artist, Tom Wesselmann, in front of one of his paintings.
Tom Wesselmann was an American artist who rose to prominence in the 1960s and became one of the leading artists of his generation. Loosely associated with the Pop Art movement (though he disliked the label), Wesselmann’s main aim was, in his own words, “to make figurative art as exciting as abstract art”.
Wesselmann’s popularity is reflected in the prices his work fetches at auction: his most expensive piece to date was sold by Sotheby’s for £4.87 million in May 2008. He enjoyed experimenting with many different mediums and techniques, and as a result, much of his work proves difficult to categorise due to the amount of different materials involved. His prints and multiples dominate his market, accounting for 54% of his work sold at auction, where they tend to fetch between £1,000 and £5,000, with a significant proportion reaching £10,000 or more.
Below is a list of Tom Wesselmann’s five most expensive prints sold at auction. If you own a Tom Wesselmann print and want to know more about how much it might be worth, or how to sell it, please get in touch with Mark Littler today.
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Times Square Nude
The female nude is intrinsic to Wesselmann’s work, and it was his Great American Nude series started in 1961 which first established his reputation. In Wesselmann’s own words, “For many years, drawing, especially from the nude, was a desperate attempt to capture something significant of the beauty of the woman I was confronted with. It was always frustrating because the beauty of the woman is so elusive.”
Wesselmann did, however, succeed in capturing female beauty in this image from 1969-70, which is a vibrant and innovative combination of a silkscreen and oil on formed vinyl. It was sold by Christie’s in March 2024 for £121,026, setting a new record for Wesselmann, and proving that his work remains exceptionally popular in today’s market, more than 20 years since his death.
Stockinged Nude
This 1980 print is from a small edition of just 25, and it was sold by Christie’s in September 2022 for £81,377, more than £25,000 over its top estimate. As with many Wesselmann nudes, the artist reduced the figure to the barest essentials, simultaneously anonymising and eroticising his female subject.
This treatment of the female nude made Wesselmann a contentious artist, with some claiming his work objectified women, whilst others saw a celebration of beauty, sexuality, and intimacy. The women who knew him best have strongly refuted claims of objectification and sexism; his former model and assistant, Monica Serra, said he had “a fascination with women in a way I’ve never seen in a guy before… The reverence was so big. Almost like they had a magic”.
Stockinged Nude sold by Christies in 2022
Birthday Bouquet
Tom Wesselmann loved experimenting with new techniques, and he worked up until the very end of his life, despite his increasing frailty. From 1983 onwards, he began exploring the possibilities of using metal in his work, later saying, “When I got this new metal stuff going, I had never run into anything so heady before… It was the most exciting time of my entire life.”
Straddling different mediums, this piece is cut out steel relief coloured with Alkyd oil, allowing Wesselmann to put his own distinctive twist on the long artistic tradition of the still life. The piece was sold by Phillips in October 2024 for £65,588. To Wesselmann, “It was like a miracle, to be able to hold this unit of spidery lines, as though it were a drawing that had just been picked up by the lines and removed, intact, from the paper.”
Birthday Bouquet sold by Phillips in 2024
Bedroom Face With Green Wallpaper
Fairly early on in his career, Tom Wesselmann decided to pursue representational rather than abstract art. He later said “I had absolutely no enthusiasm about any particular subject or direction or anything”, and so he chose to explore “the history of art… It didn’t take long before I began to follow my most active interests: nudes and still lifes.”
Bedroom Face with Green Wallpaper is a stunning combination of Wesselmann’s different interests, combining vibrant flowers, the trappings of domestic surroundings, and a close-up view of the sensual central female figure. The piece was created using an aluminium relief which was then coloured with oil paint. It was sold by Hampel in July 2002 for £61,456.
Bedroom Face With Green Wallpaper sold by Hampel in 2002
Smoker Banner
Made from shaped vinyl in colours, this 1971 piece features one of Wesselmann’s most famous recurring motifs: a closely-cropped cigarette dangling seductively from a perfect female mouth, with a whisp of smoke curling upwards. The motif has become an icon of Pop Art, endlessly reinterpreted and appropriated in the decades since Wesselmann first created it.
The motif highlights Wesselmann’s extraordinary ability to isolate and eroticise certain body parts, sometimes to the extent that they are rendered almost abstract. The piece was sold by Christie’s in September 2014 for £37,000, exceeding its top estimate by £7,000.
Smoker Banner sold by Christies in 2014
