Sometimes all you need is some bright colour, the reassurance that not everyone shaves their armpits and some glorious paintings of female nudes. Thanks heavens, then, for Tom Wesselmann’s vividly hued painting Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque, which certainly does owe a thing or two to the artist of its title. American artist Wesselmann, who died in 2004, was often associated with pop art, though “dismissed the association”, according to London’s Almine Rech gallery, which is displaying his work until 23 March in a show entitled Exhibition Detail. Writing in 2003, the year this image was produced, Wesselmann said, “In the past year my involvement has grown too intense with the [Sunset] nudes, and they simply fight it out with the abstracts on a daily basis.”
