John Wesley

John Wesley – Large-format Minimalism in the style of Pop Art

John Wesley was born in Los Angeles on 25 November 1928. From 1946 to 1950 he attended Los Angeles City College and the University of California. He then held various jobs before beginning to paint at the age of 22. His first exhibition consisted of large-format acrylic works which stood out in particular for their reduced colour spectrum. Initially the artist presented self-designed stamps and seals, later increasingly allowing figurative elements to flow into his work. In doing so, he oriented the portrayal of his figures on popular comic strips and cartoons. Although John Wesley’s pictures had a clear inherent proximity to Pop Art from early on, the idiosyncratic American occupied a special position from the beginning. The role as outsider revealed itself in a painting style that seemed at times to follow the principles of Minimalism more than Pop Art.

Eroticism and psychoses coin John Wesley’s work

John Wesley felt he did not belong to the predominant artistic trends of his time and went his own way, initially hampering his success. He felt close to Surrealism and made this known - an anachronistic inclination for the art scene of the time. John Wesley was never really happy with the repeated classification as a Pop artist – one he still hasn’t been able to escape. Only at first glance, Wesley’s motifs resemble the large-scale, colourful and often shrill works of Pop Art. In fact, they are mostly rooted in the unfathomable depths, drawing their form from psychoses, trauma and cryptic criticism of outdated American myths. The meta level of John Wesley’s work, often unwieldy and a little inaccessible, delayed his widespread recognition by critics and audiences, but could not prevent it. The erotic tension inherent in many of his pictures caused a sensation time and again. With the disturbing depiction of an empty house in his series Searching for Bumstead, the artist alluded to his own childhood and the loss of his father. The seemingly cheerful comic developed gloomily until the protagonist’s ultimate suicide – virtually the breaking of a taboo in Pop Art.

A much shown and awarded artist

In 1972, John Wesley participated in the Realism division of documenta 5 in Kassel with his own works, and fostered friendships with the artists Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. The PS1 Contemporary Art Center held a comprehensive retrospective of John Wesley’s work in 2000, whilst in 2006 he designed the cover of the catalogue for the Armory Show in Manhattan. Wesley received prizes and awards including the Guggenheim Scholarship in 1976 and the Purchase Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998 and 2004. He was married to the American writer Hannah Green until her death after which he had a six-year relationship with the painter Patricia Broderick, widow of the actor James Broderick and mother of Matthew Broderick.

On 10 February 2022, John Wesley died at his home in New York at the age of 93.