In the early 1980s, the American pop-artist Tom Wesselmann began to use metal, developing an entirely new artistic technique, the so-called "steel drawings". In these filigree, silhouette-like creations, Wesselmann uniquely succeeds in transferring the spontaneity of his graphic style, the characteristic clear and sketchy lines, into the durable material, thus creating a fascinating combination of drawing and sculpture. Strictly speaking, they are colored reliefs of drawings that Wesselmann spreads out in front of a white wall in a fine steel cut. At first glance they appear like murals.

The motifs of the "steel drawings" follow the classic Wesselmann themes: nudes, still lifes and landscapes. His signature motif, the faceless, de-individualized "Nudes" also play a key role in this technique. Contrary to the abstract painting that prevailed at the time, Wesselmann decided to work solely figuratively as early as in the late 1950s. However, he was well aware that this bold step would require a completely new approach to figuration, that he would have to explore new artistic paths. Wesselmann's legendary "steel drawings" clearly provide artistic proof that, contrary to popular belief, the history of representational painting is far from over. His first works were made of hand-cut aluminum that he painted in different colors. Wesselmann explains: "With the aluminum doodles, the idea was to take a small doodle and blow it up large, as if it had just been made on the wall." (Quoted from: https://denverartmuseum.org/article/staff-blogs/tom-wesselmann-finds-new-medium).

After months of intensive work, Wesselmann and the precision mechanic Alfred Lippincott had developed a technique that cuts steel with the high precision that the implementation of his artistic visions required. The characteristic motifs are transferred to a metal plate electronically or manually, and cut out with millimeter precision using a laser beam. Wesselmann plays with a double alienation, staging his pop art drawings in a decisive new way: On the one hand, it is the steel-cut execution, on the other hand, it is the monumental enlargement of the graphic format that is both fascinnting and confusing. Wesselmann's "Steel drawings" are like monumental, high-precision paper cutouts, they play with the confusing illusion like it was possible to take the fine lines of the drawing out of the paper and to put them onto a wall. In doing so, they transfer the principle of the "shaped canvas", which seeks to emancipate form from the rectangular painting surface, into representational, line-based painting. Their unique effect always includes the space and the current lighting mood, since the fine line structure casts a shadow on the wall depending on the light incidence. [JS]