Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati in 1931, and studied art first in Cincinnati, then in New York at the Cooper Union. His early paintings were evocative of Abstract Expressionism, influenced by Willem de Kooning. One of the first Pop artists, along with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, Wesselmann started experiments in 1959 with small, abstract collages. Then, in 1960, he adopted advertising images to make bold amusing still lifes and interiors, collages and assemblages using commonplace household items, and often, a highly stylized female nude. Wesselmann began The Great American Nude Series in 1961, a series of large and small works distinguished by number only. Some of the works include real rather than depicted objects, household objects such as a bathtub, radiator, and toaster. He has continued to feature the female nude in every major series of paintings and sculpture throughout his career.

In addition, Wesselmann was a prolific printmaker. Having touched upon the medium in the 1960s and 1970s, it was from 1980 that Wesselmann began to take the print medium seriously and devoted more time to the art of printmaking. Working in both lithograph and screen print, he created the majority of his editions are screen prints, a large number of them being created based on sitters Claire, Monica and Vivienne. Often extremely large in format, Wesselmann's pop imagery lends itself naturally to the screen print medium and the results are bright, crisp and iconic.