Tom Wesselmann made his debut in the 1950s with collages of nudes in interiors into which he incorporated sketches, fragments of wallpaper and advertisements. The artist was inspired by abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning; but also by Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh and Amedeo Modigliani, amongst others. The small collages were a harbinger of the ‘Great American Nude’ series (1961-’73) with which Wesselmann would become one of the foremost pop artists.
