Wesselmann, Tom: Landscape #4 (1965)

Tom WESSELMANN’s art played an important part in the emergence of the Ludwigs’ collection—the piece held in Budapest is in fact of key significance in this regard as well. In 1967, the Ludwigs, who frequently went to the United States on business, took what proved to be a life-changing visit to New York’s MoMA, and then to Sidney Janis’s and Leo Castelli’s gallery: the two were touched by the wind of the “new wave.” “[T]he doors to a new world opened itself to us – a door to an art world that is genuinely of our own time,” wrote Peter Ludwig in 1969, in the catalogue, Art of the Sixties. This was when the couple became exposed to American Pop Art, and one of the first works in the genre that they purchased for their collection was by Wesselmann. For a long time, the professional consensus was that the work in question was Landscape #2. However, former director of the Aachen Ludwig Collection, Wolfgang Becker cited more recent findings in the catalogue of the exhibition, Ludwig Goes Pop (2014–15), and argued that the work was in fact Landscape #4, which is now held in Budapest. It was incidentally the Ludwigs who lent Wesselmann’s large-sized Great American Nude No. 98 for the 1968 documenta, making an important contribution to the European appearance of American Pop Art.

K. B.