Live Auction 18549Post-War to Present
Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004)
Lot 13

Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004)

Study for Mouth #19

Closed5 March 2020

Price Realised

USD 275,000

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Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004)
Study for Mouth #19
signed and dated ‘Wesselmann 69’ (lower right); signed again, inscribed, titled and dated again ‘Study for Smoker 45 (Mouth #19) Wesselmann 1969’ (on the overlap)
oil on canvas
12 x 10 in. (30.5 x 25.5 cm.)
Painted in 1969.

Serge de Bloe, Knokke, Belgium
Anon. sale; Finarte, Milan, 22 June 1999, lot 129
Vecchiato Arte, Padua, Italy
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 2004

Specialist note


"They condense the eroticism of Wesselmann's Great American Nudes into succinct images of formal grandeur—only the Smokers are more symbolic, more fantastic, not plainly erotic like the Nudes but secretly obscene."
— (D. Kuspit, quoted in "Tom Wesselmann at Janis," Art in America, September-October 1974, p. 110)