Christina's world. Why Andrew Wyeth's painting became a cult classic. Wyeth Andrew: biography, career, personal life Andrew Wyeth artist all paintings

Andrew Newell Wyeth

Andrew Newell Wyeth (eng. Andrew Newell Wyeth, July 12, 1917, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, USA - January 16, 2009, ibid.) - American realist artist, one of the most prominent representatives visual arts USA of the 20th century. Son of the outstanding illustrator Newell Converse Wyeth, brother of the inventor Nathaniel Wyeth and artist Henrietta Wyeth Heard, father of the artist Jamie Wyeth.

The main theme of Wyeth's works is provincial life and American nature. Basically, his paintings depict his surroundings hometown Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine, where the artist lived in the summer. He used tempera and watercolor (with the exception of early experiments with oil).

Andrew was youngest child in the family of Newell Converse and Caroline Wyeth. He studied at home due to poor health. He began to draw early and studied painting with his father. Wyeth studied art history on his own.

Andrew Wyeth's first solo exhibition of watercolors took place in New York in 1937, when he was 20 years old. All the works exhibited there were sold out quite quickly. Early in his career, Wyeth also did some book illustrating like his father, but soon stopped doing so.

In 1940, Wyeth married Betsy James. In 1943, the couple had a son, Nicholas, and three years later their second child, James (Jamie), was born. In 1945, Wyeth lost his father (he died in a disaster). Around this time, Wyeth's realistic style was finally formed. (Wikipedia)

Christina's world, one of the most famous paintings Wyeth

The painting shows Christina Olson, Wyeth's neighbor at his summer home in Maine, sitting in a field looking at her home. Christina Olson suffered from the effects of polio, and her determination and fortitude amazed Wyeth. Despite the fact that the image of Christina is presented in the painting, his wife, Betsy Wyeth, posed for the artist. The artist wrote about her: “Christina was limited physically, but not spiritually.”

The house the girl is looking at is the Olson farm in Cushing, Maine. Cushing was one of the main themes of the artist’s work, who spent the summer months here all his life.

Andrew Wyeth is one of the most adored and, at the same time, one of the most underrated American artists of the 20th century. Wyeth wrote in a realistic manner - in the era of modernism this was suicidal courage. Critics accused him of lacking imagination, in , that he caters to the tastes of housewives, in , that he discredited artistic realism.

Wyeth was never a fashionable artist: at times, buying his paintings, museum curators tried to do this without unnecessary noise - so as not to be branded as retrogrades and to maintain their reputation. As for housewives, they reciprocated Wyeth's feelings. His exhibitions were always sold out."The public loves Wyeth,- they wrote in 1963 in a New York newspaper, - for that that his characters’ noses are where they’re supposed to be.”

Andrew Wyeth was born in 1917 in the tiny town of Chadds Ford in Pennsylvania. His father - Newell Wyeth - was a famous illustrator. So famous, what's in his village house, happened , such celebrities came to visit, like Scott Fitzgerald and Mary Pickford.

Newell mainly specialized in children's books. AND everyday life the Wyeth estate also resembled a fairy tale: the house was chock-full of pirate chests, knightly plumes, Indian tomahawks and other props, which Newell needed for work. An ordinary Halloween celebration in the Wyeth household could rival theatrical production average. Every Christmas Night Newell Wyeth, regardless of the likelihood of domestic injuries, climbed onto the roof in a Santa suit and entered own house through the chimney. He did everything, to awaken the imagination and creativity in your children.

However, not only his own - Newell had dozens of students. The surrounding area was thickly lined with easels. Nearby barns, garages and everything, whatever is possible, was converted into art workshops. If you happen to visit Chadds Ford in the 20s of the last century, you wouldn't walk a hundred steps, without tripping over some paint-stained young talent.

Not surprising , that Andrew started drawing almost earlier, than he said the first word. Andrew Wyeth always named his father first among his teachers. Nevertheless, he quickly realized that in a creative sense he and Newell are not on the same path.

Reality attracted Andrew Wyeth more than book fantasies. However« magical" childhood was not in vain: in a simple northern landscape, in the simple weathered faces of the neighbors, in the web of frost-covered weeds, he was able to discern something mysterious, irrational and often frightening.

When Andrew was 28, his father's car collided with a freight train at a railroad crossing. Since then, a feeling of loss has almost always been discerned in his paintings. The invisible one became a frequent guest there., but that makes Death no less fascinating.

It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say, that Wyeth lived as a recluse. He did not respond to attacks from critics, avoided social fuss and didn't seem to notice that outside the windows the twentieth century roars and rages. Wyeth was once reproached, that his models don't wear watches - that's how cool it is, according to capital art critics, he missed the train.

Andrew Wyeth valued this secluded and measured lifestyle very much. He rarely left Chadd's Ford(making an exception for his summer home on the Maine ocean coast). He only painted these two places.“A person returns from a journey not the same as before,- he said. — I don’t go anywhere because I’m afraid of losing something important—maybe naivety.”

For the most part, Andrew Wyeth communicated with civilization through his wife, Betsy James.Betsy understood his work well and also had remarkable organizational skills. In an interview, she compared herself to a director, who had the best actor in the world at his disposal. Betsy gave the paintings titles, she tirelessly communicated with gallery owners and collectors, compiled catalogs - in a word, ran the business with an energetic and steady hand. Younger son artist - Jamie Wyeth,also an artist - joking, that one day I found in my mother’s desk drawer a photograph of my father with an inventory number on his forehead.

Of course, an introvert like Wyatt jealously guarded the boundaries of his world even from his wife. Sometimes - especially from her.

In 1986, Wyeth unveiled a series of paintings under the general title« Helga." In the early seventies, he met Helga Testorf, who lived next door to his summer home in Cushing. Since then Helgawas his regular model. About relationships (definitely beyond the professional) were known only to a couple of close friends. When journalists, accustomed, what Betsy traditionally says on behalf of Wyeth, they asked her, What does all of this mean, she answered laconically: “Love.” She was annoyed: 15 years of life, almost 250 paintings, and all this is beyond her control.“What was she waiting for? So that I spend my whole life painting old boats?!- Wyeth said later. — No , I know, I am a snake in the oats... I am a master of subterfuge...".

No matter how masterfully Wyeth maneuvered, national love and critical acclaim finally overtook him. When the wave of abstract art craze subsided, it became clear that housewives have excellent taste, that old boats have it too what to tell, that Andrew Wyeth is one of the most brilliant and important artists in human history. In 2007, he received from the hands of President Bush Jr. The National Medal is America's highest honor in the arts.

In 2009, Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep at the age of 91. Of course, at his home in Chadds Ford."When I die, don't worry about me,- he said shortly before his death, - I don't think that I will attend my funeral. Remember this. I’ll be somewhere far away, walking along a new path that’s twice as good as the old one.”(from article Andrey Zimoglyadov)

The greatest of American artists, Andrew Wyeth, was born on July 12, 1917 in Chads Ford, Pennsylvania, the fifth and youngest child in the family of artist Nevell Wyeth. Due to poor health, he had to receive his education at home, and his main teacher was his father, who also gave him his first lessons in artistic skill. Andrew also did a lot of independent research into the history of painting and literature. His favorite painters included the Renaissance masters and American realists, especially Winslow Homer, and his favorite writers were Henry Thoreau and Robert Frost.

Andrew began painting very early - first with watercolors, then with egg tempera, to which he owes the later famous muted tonality of his canvases. Oil paints the artist has never used it. In 1937, the first solo exhibition of watercolors by twenty-year-old Wyeth, depicting landscapes of Maine, took place in New York. All the works presented there were quickly sold out, which confirmed the artist in the correctness of his choice. life path. In 1940, he married Betsy James, who became not only his wife, but also a sensitive friend, loyal ally and public relations agent.

“I paint these hills around Chad’s Ford not because they are better than the hills in other places, but because I was born here, lived here - they are full of meaning to me.”

In 1945, Andrew Wyeth's father died in a train accident. The painful feeling of loss is expressed in the painting “Winter”, painted shortly after. The loss of his closest person became a turning point not only in his personal life, but also in Wyeth’s work. It was after this that his painting finally acquired character traits a style that brought him first all-American and then world fame. This style has been described in many different ways, but perhaps it is best described as “mystical hyperrealism.” “Lord, when I start to really look at something, at a simple object, and realize its hidden meaning, if I start to feel it, there is no end to it,” these are the words the artist himself described the process of his creativity. The meticulously detailed details of the surrounding world on Wyeth’s canvases open the door to infinity, the images lead to prototypes.

“I think and dream a lot about past and future things - the eternity of rocks and hills - all those people who lived here. I prefer winter and autumn, when the landscape feels its skeletal frame - its loneliness - the dead feeling of winter. Something is lurking below, something remains hidden.”

After the death of his father, Andrew Wyeth begins to spend the summer months around the town of Cushing in Maine. The nature of New England acquires the same rights in his canvases as the nature of his native Pennsylvania. It was in Cushing, on the Olson family farm, that Wyeth wrote his most famous painting, which has become an iconic work of all American painting XX century - “Christina’s World”. It may seem paradoxical that one of the symbols of America has become the image of a girl crawling across a field with paralyzed legs. And in general it is difficult to find something further from the dominant one in modern mass consciousness image of the USA than the endlessly lonely heroes of Wyeth’s paintings, immersed in deep melancholy. However, this did not prevent him from gaining a huge number of fans and becoming, in the true sense of the word, an American folk artist. And the point here is hardly just his figurative language, understandable for ordinary people and ridiculed by those nearby art critics as “simple illustration”. Along with the America of Manhattan and Hollywood, there is also the America of Chads-Ford and Cushing, and which of them is real is still a question.

“I think people always find sad pictures that are contemplative and silent, that represent a person alone. Is it really because we have lost the art of being alone?”

From the late forties and for almost three decades, members of the Olson family and their farm were constant subjects of Wyeth's paintings. Just as friendly and creative relationships connected the artist with the Kuerner family and farm, who were his neighbors in Chadz Ford. Currently, both of these farms are memorable places that attract thousands of fans of the artist. In 1958, Wyeth purchased “The Mill,” an eighteenth-century structure in the vicinity of his Pennsylvania home that has since become a recurring feature in his paintings. Along with familiar people and their homes, Wyeth's main source of inspiration was the nature of Pennsylvania and New England, which he loved to immerse himself in during his long solitary walks. After the death of Christina Olson in 1969, new female heroines appeared on the artist’s canvases - Siri Erickson and especially Helga Testorf, to whom he dedicated an outstanding series of two and a half hundred sketches and paintings written from 1970 to 1985. Helga was an emigrant from Germany , who worked in the Kuerners' house. She immediately attracted the attention of Wyeth, who later recalled: “I could not get out of my head the image of that high-cheekboned Prussian face with wide-set eyes framed by blond hair.”

Wyeth was a singer of the North - the northeastern United States primarily, but also feeling a deep kinship with the land of his ancestors in northern Europe. It is no coincidence that in his paintings there are so many natives of these places - Germans, Swedes, Finns. Echoes of Nordic legends are present in many of his paintings, such as the 1982 painting “Adrift”. She represents the artist’s old friend, fisherman Walt Anderson, sleeping in a boat floating with the current, the image of which evokes memories of the rituals with which the Vikings sent their comrades to the other world.

Wyeth's work is deeply religious, although this religiosity is almost never expressed directly. One of the few exceptions is the 1944 painting “Christmas Morning,” which the artist painted under the impression of the death of his longtime friend Mrs. Sanderson. In an unusual surrealistic manner, Wyeth strives to depict the transition human soul from one world to another, death as a continuation of the journey, as birth into a new life. The same theme is present in many of the artist’s other works, although this can often only be understood if you know the circumstances of their creation. Thus, in the 1993 film “Marriage”, Wyeth depicts the death of his friends, the Sipal couple, whose souls leave their bodies and are removed through open window, and in the 1989 painting “Pentecost” (“Pentecost”), the wind shaking the fishing nets on Allen Island represents the soul of a young woman who had recently drowned there. One can rightly recognize Andrew Wyeth as an exponent in painting of the same religious spirit of the American Northeast that literary means was expressed—primarily in the Four Quartets—by his elder contemporary Thomas Stearns Eliot, who was closely connected with New England by family and spiritual ties.

“I am convinced that an artist’s art can only overcome the distance that his love can overcome.”

A retrospective of Wyeth's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006 attracted more than 175,000 visitors, setting a world record for attendance at an exhibition by a contemporary artist. The last recognition of Wyeth's talent during his lifetime was the award of the US National Medal of Arts in 2007, and since 2008 he stopped appearing in public and giving interviews. In response to requests from journalists who wanted to meet with him, he said: “Everything I could say is already hanging on the walls.” Andrew Wyeth passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Chad's Ford on January 16, 2009 at the age of 91.

“When I die, don't worry about me. I don't think I'll attend my funeral. Remember this. I will be somewhere far away, walking along a new path. Which is twice as good as before.”

Cooling Shed

Dil Huey Farm

Distant Thunder

In the Orchard

Master Bedroom

Retread Freds

The Kuners

The Revenant

The Witching Hour

Trodden Weed

Wind from the Sea

Winter Fields

Witches Broom

Night Sleeper

Black Velvet

Battleground

Afternoon Flight

Walking Stick

Christmas Morning

Chimney Swift

Charlie Ervine

Christina Olson

End of Olsons

Christina's World

Artist Andrew Wyeth is considered a classic of American painting. It’s hard to say whether fate would have been so merciful to him if he had not painted one picture – “Christina’s World”. What kind of Christina is this that so easily decided the artist’s fate?
Andrew's father, known as "N.K.", was also a popular illustrator. He taught his son that the main thing in painting is color, especially if you are painting a country like America. The son objected:
– A great country needs not bright colors, but bright people. Greatness is in simplicity. And the simplest and most natural color is gray, the color of ordinary earth, which has been trampled by the shoe of a farmer, whose face, like the earth, has been weathered by the winds and deprived of its color by the sweat of the one who works on the land.
The father did not agree. And Andrew didn’t argue. He simply took an easel and ran away for the summer to some American outback, where no one could find him. This is how he saw creative freedom. In 1947, Wyeth settled in Cushing, Maine. From the attic in which he set up his studio, one could see a field, an unpainted barn in the distance and lots and lots of sky. In a word: a charming American hole. The proximity to the ocean made the houses in Cushing colorless and featureless, like a faded field. But people did not yet know the word “snobbery” and therefore were not similar to each other. Not like in San Francisco or New York, where everyone seemed to come out of the same hair salon on 42nd Street.
Immediately upon his arrival, Andrew stopped by his neighbors, the Olsons, for some small change. I looked in for a minute and was stuck for a good two hours. And no wonder. In the living room there was a magnet that attracted the young artist - the Olsons’ daughter Christina. “The girl with the face of a fairy,” Andrew immediately dubbed her, but, of course, he didn’t dare say it out loud.
While Christina’s mother was preparing fruit juice for the guest under a canopy in the yard, the girl entertained young man with an ingenuous story about their log house, which, it turns out, was built by her grandmother. Built as an inn for sailors. Sailors love quiet harbors. Here is one sailor from Gothenburg who settled forever in the “Cushing harbor”. His surname, naturally, was purely Swedish - Olson. So in the “charming American hole” the Olson family took root.
Wyeth left this “safe haven” with great reluctance, although one detail embarrassed him a little: when he first entered the living room, the girl, as is customary in the American outback, did not get up from her chair to greet the guest. She sat there for two hours, throwing an old blanket over her knees. Maybe she didn’t like Andrew for some reason?..
Days passed. The young artist drew sketches and sketches. But I never saw Christina again. And then one day, looking out of the window of his “studio” in the attic, he saw Christina. She lay down on a field not far away and was clearly resting. A thought flashed through Andrew's mind: how can you rest in such an uncomfortable position? But then something completely incredible happened. Christina began to crawl across the field towards the house in the distance. I wanted to rush to help her, but something seemed to grip Andrew’s whole body, as if paralyzed. The picture was surreal: a field scorched by the sun and on it a female figure in a pink dress. Like a lobster shell stepped on by a merciless boot. But the lobster did not die - it crawled, dragging its shell behind it. And with this he has already won the fight for life.
Wyeth later learned that Christina suffered a serious illness as a child and remained paralyzed for the rest of her life. But the granddaughter of a Swedish sailor, she inherited not only a log house, but also courage, and the thirst for life gradually created a new shell - a new inner world, incomprehensible to other people. The world of Christina Olson. It was impossible to penetrate it, it could only be accepted and bowed to.
That summer in Cushing, artist Andrew Wyeth understood the main thing: there was no need to look for a loophole into Christina’s world. You just can't forget about him. It is easier for an artist to do this than for everyone else - for the sake of your memory and that of your descendants, you can capture it on canvas. Moreover, life has already come up with a name for this - “Christina’s World”. It features a sun-scorched field, lots and lots of sky and a heart under a pink dress, choking on life.

I have had this post in my thoughts for a long time. Not only because Andrew Wyeth is one of my favorite painting artists, whom I dream of seeing live. But another reason lies in the fact that once upon a time I promised some of my friends to introduce them to American art.

I remember the surprised, long faces at my statement that there are many excellent American artists.

This is in America, where from? A young, fragmented nation.

Are you talking about pop art?

And I completely agree, in American art before the 20th century you can really find little that is outstanding, especially at the global level. But then...
So the first person I'll talk about, and I hope not the last, is Andrew Wyeth.
Unfortunately, he left this world not so long ago in 2009.

My acquaintance with the work of this artist happened 6 years ago thanks to my beloved teacher Elena Aleksandrovna Trofimova. One of her friends brought a monograph from abroad a long time ago. I remember how amazed I was by the reproductions printed there. Unfortunately, the Internet and the quality of the pictures here give a very poor idea of ​​his painstaking detail in his works and his excellent command of watercolors. I remember how I looked greedily
into every picture.
I would like to note that realism is probably one of my least favorite movements in art,
I couldn’t formulate why for a long time, because the answer because I don’t like the realistic depiction of the subject didn’t suit me. And finally I realized that realism very often kills
in the picture there is a mystery, a story, everything is so clear, simple and understandable that I looked and passed by, I don’t want to think about it. You see excellent technique and nothing else, the artist does not show his attitude to the depicted plot. The picture turns out to be faceless, very technical, but without feelings. Is this art? This is skill, but what lies beyond it? Nothing?
It turns out that a certain paradox seems to be drawn exactly as in life, but there is no life.
The picture is dead. Dead objects, dead faces...
But now looking at some contemporary artists I'm starting to notice that they are taking realism to a new level and it's quite interesting.

And Andrew Wyeth first of all struck me with his secret. His style is characterized as “magical hyperrealism” and that says it all. His ability to present a simple subject in a simple, but at the same time complex space. His compositions... are filled with emptiness!
something that I love and appreciate so much! and I hope someday I can achieve it.

The monograph was of course in English and included Wyeth's diary. Elena Alexandrovna translated everything and read several passages to us, and that’s when I finally and irrevocably fell in love with this artist. What an extraordinary perception of the world this is.

I will post some of Wyeth’s thoughts in a separate post.
Right here:
From his paintings this thrill lived history. And in practice, it turns out that every painting, every object, is something very personal, which he describes in his diary. In fact, a post is not enough for me to tell about all these things and stories.
Yes, and unfortunately there is no reliable source at hand, and the Internet is very scarce and unreliable in this regard. So friends who often travel abroad! If you happen to be in America and any literature concerning Andrew Wyeth comes across your eyes, I will be grateful to the end of my life! I will pay and return any money :) do you get the hint?)))

But I will still tell you the story of one painting. From memory, so forgive some possible inaccuracies.
This picture and this story are etched in my memory very clearly. And always remembering Andrew Wyeth, I first remember this beautiful written metaphor. I think this story completely characterizes Wyeth's work.
I spent several hours searching for this picture in the depths of the Internet to tell who is depicted in it and found it only in this quality. But I hope my efforts were not in vain and you will like it.

You see the bell hanging on two supports. It would seem nothing special, but it turns out this is a portrait of his sister, who loved to wear hats, she was crippled, apparently had some kind of injury, and walked on crutches. Seeing this picture, she understood everything and asked Wyeth to give it to her.
I think this is very touching...

Well, now everything is in order.

Andrew Newell Wyeth (July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, USA.
Son of the outstanding illustrator Newell Converse Wyeth, brother of inventor Nathaniel Wyeth and artist Henrietta Wyeth Heard, father of artist Jamie Wyeth.

Andrew was the youngest child of Newell Converse and Caroline Wyeth. He studied at home due to poor health. He began to draw early and studied painting with his father. Wyeth studied art history on his own.
Andrew Wyeth's first solo exhibition of watercolors took place in New York in 1937, when he was 20 years old. All the works exhibited there were sold out quite quickly. Early in his career, Wyeth also did some book illustrating like his father, but soon stopped doing so.
Throughout the subsequent time, Wyeth alternately lived in Pennsylvania and Maine, practically without leaving the east coast of the United States. The artist's style remained virtually unchanged, although over time Wyeth's paintings became more symbolic, moving towards magical realism.

N. C. Wyeth’s father is just a bright representative of that very realism that I don’t like!
But nevertheless, the artist deserves attention.
A little information:

He taught his son that the main thing in painting is color, especially if you are painting a country like America. Andrew believed that a great country does not need bright colors, but bright people. Greatness is in simplicity. And the simplest and most natural color is gray, the color of ordinary earth, which has been trampled by the shoe of a farmer, whose face, like the earth, has been weathered by the winds and deprived of its color by the sweat of the one who works on the land.

Andrew Wyeth spent long hours outdoors: in the Olson house, in the house of the Koerner neighbors, whom he often painted, hours on the bank of a stream, in the heat, hours under a tree, in the cold. No one in the house knew where or why he was going. Freedom and secrecy of work was his privilege. Relatives were forbidden to ask where he had been. In his choice of objects, Wyeth was not necessarily guided by love or admiration, but certainly by a strong feeling.

He immersed the viewer in the everyday world in which they lived ordinary people. Modern civilization and the industrial age were not present in this world. Once a critic noticed that his heroes do not wear... watches. Reproaching him for this.

The most important feature of Andrew Wyeth's work is that the artist lived his entire life in only two places: Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and on the ocean coast of Maine, where the family had a summer home. He painted ONLY these two places. He made portraits only of the inhabitants of these towns - his friends and neighbors. So if we talk about “Andrew Wyeth’s world” in geographical terms, then it is tiny.
But... another thing about Andrew was that he had long, close, intimate relationships with the people he painted, and with their houses, and with the views that opened from their windows. And he had the strongest feelings for all his objects.

I remember looking at this work for at least 10 minutes. Black leather among colorful shreds, what a subtle combination of colors, what technical execution cannot be expressed in words.

Barracoon. 1976.

"Henry Teel" 1944

The Old Man and the Sea.....
Adrift, 1982

Master Bedroom, 1965

The Quaker, 1976

Night Sleeper. 1979

Marriage, 1993

Faraway, 1952

Wind from the Sea. 1947

Pentecost. 1989

Off at sea. 1972

Open and Closed. 1964

Monday Morning. 1965

Walking Stick. 2002

Ring-Road.1985

The Witching Hour. 1977

unfortunately these works are in small sizes:

Viewers who do not know either his characters or the circumstances of his life respond to Wyeth’s emotions. The Helga collection was bought by the Japanese for huge millions. Wyeth's exhibition was a huge success in Russia in 1987. I think the secret of Andrew Wyeth's painting (like all art) is that it can express feelings.

And here are the works of his son, Jamie Wyeth.
His father's philosophy is clearly close to him.

phew... well, it seems like the end)))
I apologize that not all the works are signed and dated, I just don’t have the strength anymore.
I hope you will enjoy!

I have long wanted to present the paintings of this artist, whom I have loved since childhood...

And so, finally, having scoured the entire Internet, I combined two articles about him, added that I found something to my liking, and am presenting it to you for your viewing.

Wind from the sea and cold on the back...Piercing through and through paintings by Andrew Wyeth (this is the first article)

“A great country does not need bright colors, but bright people. Greatness is in simplicity. And the simplest and most natural color is gray, the color of ordinary earth, which has been trampled by the shoe of a farmer, whose face, like the earth, has been weathered by the winds and deprived of its color by the sweat of the one who works on the land.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I am convinced that the artist’s art can only cover so much distance as his love can cover,” Wyeth wrote.

Well, his art conquered not only the planet, but also time.

And the fact that man is mortal is only on Earth.

“The most important thing in art is emotion, but it must be your own, just like your difficulties, your torments when you create a picture. It is a great danger to know how to present a face, to portray a spruce tree. Nature can never be a formula. I have to feel the model in order to write it.”

Andrew Wyeth

“Lord, when I start to really look at something, at a simple object, and realize its hidden meaning, if I start to feel it, there is no end to it.”

Andrew Wyeth

"Maggie's Daughter"

“I achieve a feeling of alienation between the model and the audience. It’s important for me to keep a bit of mystery inside the picture.” Andrew

Wyeth (Andrew Wyeth)

“It was hot there, I opened the window, and suddenly the wind blew up the curtain, which had not moved for probably 30 years. God, it was fantastic! A thin net of tulle flew up from the dusty floor so quickly, as if it were not the wind, but a ghost, a spirit for which a way out had been opened. Then I waited a month and a half for the western wind, but, fortunately, this magical wave lived in my memory, which sent a chill down my spine.”

Andrew Wyeth

"I'm looking for reality, a real feeling of an object, of the whole structure around it... I always want to see the third dimension of something... I want to come alive with the object."

Andrew Wyeth

“It doesn’t matter what exactly you do, it’s important that everything you touch changes shape, becomes different from what it was before, so that a part of you remains in it.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I devote too much space to the plot. If in the end I become a truly worthwhile artist, it will only be when I give it up.”

Andrew Wyeth

“You can see the same object at any time of the day or in your imagination in a myriad of tonal changes. Generally speaking, I find it boring to write subjects that are new to me. I'm much more interested in presenting something I've seen for years in a new light."

Andrew Wyeth

“And then a small figure in a green, unfashionable coat with a cape appeared at the top of the hill. Covered with last year's withered grass, illuminated by the blinding winter light, this endless hill suddenly approached. In this thin woman, whose hand hung in the air, I saw myself, my restless soul.”

Andrew Wyeth

"I don't really have studios. I wander through people's attics, fields, basements, everywhere I find something that invites me."

Andrew Wyeth

“My father said: “For a child’s life to be creative, he must have his own world, belonging only to him.” I started drawing very early, and my father believed that an artist did not need college: I was taught by a teacher who came to my home, my father himself and his artist friends. And he achieved his goal. A little more and I would have remained forever in Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest. I still got out of there, but I went into my own world.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I am very skeptical about the mood of a painting if this mood is given to it deliberately.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I have a strong romantic fantasy about things, and that’s what I portray. But I do it in a realistic manner. If you cannot back up your fantasies with truth, then the result is very, I would say, stooped art.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I try to react to everything - to become like a resonator, always ready to vibrate in tune with the vibrations emanating from something or someone. And I often catch out of the corner of my eye a fleeting impression of what I saw, an exciting flash..."

Andrew Wyeth

“I can’t convey any feeling without a connection to this place. In fact, I think your art will be greater the more deeply you love what you depict.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I saw a lot of portraits, the people in them looked like they were alive - all were written without a trace of passion. The details are exactly copied. It's horrible. You will never be able to understand those depicted; there is no life in the pictures.

There is an artist who wants to demonstrate his own personality. For me, everything I write takes on a meaning greater than myself. Only a crazy person can emphasize his value as a creator.”

Andrew Wyeth

“I paint these hills around Chad's Ford not because they are better than the hills in other places, but because I was born here, lived here - they are full of meaning to me.”

Andrew Wyeth

"Christina's World"

“You see, constant presence on the scene is important. I need to live surrounded by what I write about. Then at some point you can grasp the meaning. When I wrote Christina's World, I worked on the field for five months... I would like to write only the field without Christina and make her presence felt. Making a background is like building a house and then living there... If you restrain yourself and wait for the right moment, it can decide the whole matter.”

Andrew Wyeth

Homebody mystic

Andrew Wyeth was born in 1917 in Pennsylvania, in the small town of Chadds Ford. His father, the famous book illustrator Newell Wyeth, taught his son his craft, and at the age of twenty he opened his first exhibition of watercolors.

It was a success; all the paintings exhibited in the Macbeth Gallery were surprisingly quickly snapped up by enthusiastic connoisseurs. Success continued to accompany the young artist, and by 1955 he became a member of the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Not so quickly, but international recognition is coming to him. And although his paintings and exhibitions traveled all over the world, Wyeth himself was always distinguished by an almost complete lack of interest in any trips or travel.

He spent his entire life where he was born. And for the summer months he moved to the town of Cushing, Maine.

“I deliberately do not like to travel,” Andrew Wyeth wrote in his diaries. “After a trip you never come back the same - you become more erudite... I’m afraid of losing something important for my work, maybe naivety.”

It is not surprising that in all his paintings there are landscapes of only two places, and the heroes of the paintings are neighbors living nearby. Choosing a person whom he knows well as a model, respectful attention to everyone - the artist almost never changed this rule.

And when painting nature, before he took up his brush, he tried to get to know it as closely as possible and could lie on the ground for hours, peering at a small twig or flower - “get used to their existence.”

Andrew elevated the surrounding reality and everyday life to the rank of the most valuable thing that can be given to a person. Sometimes it seems that, immersing himself in any object of his work, the artist tries to immediately penetrate into the essence of all things.

And he conveys this on canvas so accurately that he imperceptibly crosses the line between the visible external and inner world. It’s not for nothing that art critics describing his work started talking about Andrew as a “mystical hyperrealist.”

Helga's Universe

Every dramatic event in a personal biography is always an event in artistic space Wyeth. One of these events was a meeting with Helga Testorf. A German emigrant working on a neighboring farm, who was hired by neighbors to work in the house, became the person through whom Wyeth discovered and perceived on canvas what seemed like the whole Universe.

As a result - 247 paintings over almost 15 years the main character- a woman with high cheekbones, an unremarkable Prussian face and wide-set eyes. The paintings were created in secret from everyone, even from his wife, and the artist subsequently never commented on either the history of this series or the circumstances of the work.

Only once, in his diary, did he describe the first moment of this meeting that turned his life upside down: “And then a small figure in a green, unfashionable coat with a cape appeared on the top of the hill.

Covered with last year's withered grass, illuminated by the blinding winter light, this hill has been transformed. In this thin woman, whose hand hung in the air, I saw myself, my restless soul.”

When the series of works with Helga Testorf was revealed to the world, journalists asked at least the artist’s wife to say something about it. She replied: “He was lucky that the paintings turned out to be brilliant, otherwise I would have killed him.”

The art of Andrew Wyeth is the art of being alone. And it is familiar to everyone. Here on the canvas there are only empty hills and the figure of a traveler moving not to conquer, but to submit and accept space.

The gaze of a modern viewer, accustomed to calling, bright objects, has nothing to cling to - and without this support you lose your balance and plunge into yourself. Then the vibrating intensity of the living field, permeating the entire world, fascinates the viewer.

“I am convinced that the artist’s art can only cover so much distance as his love can cover,” Wyeth wrote. Well, his art conquered not only the planet, but also time. And the fact that man is mortal is only on Earth.

The artist lived a long life, leaving thousands of paintings, and passed on to another world at the age of 91 in his home, in a dream.

“In art it is important not to lose purity. I deliberately don't like to travel.

After a trip you never come back the same - you become more erudite...

I'm afraid of losing something important to my work - maybe naivety."

Andrew Wyeth

This is what artist Maria Trudler writes on her blog

People are eager to travel, trying to travel around the world in order to know themselves. And I know one American artist who almost never traveled, having spent his entire life in his hometown.

He did not receive an art education, did not even graduate from high school.

He was withdrawn, kept a diary, and was attached to his friends and acquaintances. His name is Andrew Wayeth.

I have to admit, I keep forgetting his name. I find it on the Internet only by the name of the painting that I love most - “Christina’s World”. The picture is amazing.

Through her you see the feelings of this girl as if you were lying in this field and looking at that house in the distance. Such stunning craftsmanship. I don't like realism in painting.

But I can’t take my eyes off his paintings. I don't know what affects me this way. They are absolutely fantastic. You breathe in them and can’t get enough of them. There is some kind of deep secret in them. Half open.

It’s as if you look a little more and everything will become clear. About life, death, love, loneliness. Eternity... Almost Rembrandt-like, dim lighting.

The feeling of light and shadow, as from the main characters of the paintings, is on a par with loneliness.

From which you go to the sea, exposing your face to the wind. You run into the field.

You hide, curling up in a ball on the bed. You are standing at the window. You climb onto the roof of a house and sit there for hours. The atmosphere in his works is piercing to the point of chills and goosebumps.

The diary entries are no less chilling than the intimate restraint of the paintings.

Reading his thoughts, you see a romantic whose main goal is to show not his brilliant technical craft, but his passionate feelings. He said that he would never allow anyone to watch him while he was painting. Painting for him is something very personal. Like love.

Therefore, his workshop consists of fields, basements, attics, old houses and boats.

The artist painted in watercolors and tempera. Andrew Wayeth's style is defined as mystical hyperrealism or magical realism. Before I met him, I had no idea that realism could have such an indescribable impact.

Ordinary, inconspicuous pieces of reality, ordinary objects, portraits of his beloved Helga - and he gets through it so much that he feels uneasy. It’s as if you fall into his paintings and get lost in them.

Everything is so real. Andrew Wyeth is my favorite realist artist. For me, he became an example of the fact that even through photographic reality you can show your feelings in such a way... It will pierce right through.

Like a cold, north wind from the sea. But until I saw his paintings, I considered realism to be the antipode of art. For superficiality, soullessness.

This is such an irony of fate. Author name: Maria Trudler Publish date: 01/12/2012 Discussion: 41 Comments Categories:

Thoughts on Art About Maria Trudler: Hello. My name is Maria Trudler.

I am an artist. I love art. In all forms and manifestations. I paint, I draw.

I keep a handwritten diary about creativity in my free time from drawing.

I publish selected entries on the blog. Follow on Twitter Contact the author

In 1913, at the Armory Show, works by masters who belonged to various areas of post-impressionism were exhibited. American artists were divided: some of them turned to exploring the possibilities of color and formal abstraction, others: Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), Edward Hopper(1882-1967), Fairfield Porter (1907-1975), Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)...,developed the realistic tradition.

Wyeth, Andrew - American artist, representative of magical realisma is a singer from the Nordic northeastern United States.He painted tragic portraits of houses, roads, things, seasons, streams and people in watercolor and tempera. His work, classified by art critics as realistic, nevertheless sparked endless debate about the nature of modernism, and divided public opinion even more sharply than the debate over his contemporary, Andrew Warhol..

Preferring the tempera technique, which allows for particularly fine detail, Andrew Wyeth continued the traditions of American romanticism and magical realism, devoting his work to the emphatically “soil” landscape motifs of his immediate surroundings, as well as his neighbors, represented as archetypal figures of the “American Dream”. His landscapes and genreportraits (Winter day, 1946, Art Museum North Carolina, Raleigh; Christina's World, 1948; Young America, 1950; Distant Thunder, 1961...) over the years acquired an increasingly symbolic and generalized character. Ordinary landscapes of the rural outback, old buildings and interiors, people of the province, painted with Wyeth’s brush, look like visual stages national history, presented in lively, slightly sentimental images. Among his later cycles the most significant arePortraits of Helga, full of soft, poetic eroticism.

The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford is now largely devoted to the art of the Wyeth dynasty. A famous artist, animal painter and secular portrait painter is the sonAndrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth ( ).

“It was hot there, I opened the window, and suddenly the wind blew up the curtain, which had not moved for probably 30 years. God, it was fantastic! A thin net of tulle flew up from the dusty floor so quickly, as if it were not the wind, but a ghost, a spirit for which a way out had been opened. Then I waited a month and a half for the western wind, but, fortunately, this magical wave lived in my memory, which sent a chill down my spine.”

There is such a thing - great American novel. They mostly talk about him when remembering Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner and Jerome Salinger. They reflected the mood of the country's inhabitants and shaped the literary tradition and, to a large extent, the culture as a whole. And if you imagine the artists who reflectedon canvaswhat Faulkner and Salinger wrote about, one of the most important among them would undoubtedly be Andrew Newell Wyeth.

At Roque'slla Kent and Andrew Wyeth are very different destinies... Kent spent his whole life wandering around the world, as if someone was chasing him, looking for unity with nature in the most remote corners of the world. And Andrew Wyeth’s life flowed between his native Pennsylvania and Maine, where he went for the summer. He was a convinced homebody. And yet there is something that these two artists, as well as Hopper and many lesser-known Americans, have in common - this is the Great American Loneliness. The cult of individuality is America's pain and at the same time its glory. Each American, independently solving his problems, thereby created the foundation of American society. Without this cult there would be no

great country , as without Kent, Wyeth, Hopper there would be no Great American Painting and 20th century.

Andrew Wyatt and the Great American Loneliness

Andrew Wyeth was born in 1917 in the small town of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in the family of a famous book illustrator and the painter Newell Converse Wyeth ().His father, who illustrated Stevenson, Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper, became so famous in the 20s that not only artists, but also Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Pickford and other stars visited the Wyeth house. The fields and groves near the house were lined with easels. Holidays were celebrated theatrically. On Halloween such monsters appeared that the younger children trembled with fear until they recognized the artist they knew under the mask. At Christmas, my father, pretending to be Santa Claus, would stomp on the roof at night and lower gifts down the chimney. The father painted costumes, and the children enthusiastically played Fenimore Cooper's Indians, Robin Hood and Treasure Island.Andy learned art from his father. He lived almost constantly in his native land (Brandywine River Valley), and spent the summer months in Cushing (Maine).

Takeoff.

The first exhibition of landscapes by 20-year-old Andy at the Macbeth Gallery brought him a triumphant success - all the works were sold out within one day. Success followed subsequent exhibitions of watercolors, and led to Andy Wyeth's election as a member of the National Academy of Design.

In 1955, Andrew Wyeth became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in 1977 he was elected a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts, in 1978 he became an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Arts, and in 1980 he was elected to the British Royal Academy.

What is he like, this romantic of the twentieth century? “I deliberately don’t like to travel,” Andrew Wyeth writes in his diaries. - After a trip you never come back the same - you become more erudite... I'm afraid of losing something important to my work, maybe naivety."

“A great country does not need bright colors, but bright people. Greatness lies in simplicity. And the simplest and most natural color is gray, the color of ordinary earth, which was trampled by the shoe of a farmer, whose face, like the earth, was weathered by the winds and deprived of its color by the sweat of who works on earth."

In 1940, Andrew Wyeth married Betsy JaeJames, who was destined to play a big role in his work. Betsy was not only his model, but also his secretary, critic, and consultant. She came up with plots for his paintings, gave them names, and advised him to abandon bright colors. In 1943, their first child, Nicholas, was born, and three years later, James, who also became a fairly famous artist.

In October 1945, Andrew's father and his three-year-old nephew were killed when their car became stuck on railroad tracks in front of a moving train. The death of his father brought an end to Wyeth's youth. The tempera "Winter" was a response to the death of his father. Two years later in Maine, on the Olsens' farm, a master painting was paintedand "Christina's World".

Christina's world. 1948

In 1948, Wyeth began painting Anna and Carl Kuerner, neighbors in Chadds Ford. Their farm was located just a few yards from where his father died.

The fields, meadows, forests and hills of Chadds Ford became for him not just his homeland, but a meeting place with his greatest love. This happened in the winter of 1985. In his autobiography, the artist writes: “And then at the top of the hill a small figure appeared in a green, unfashionable coat with a cape. Covered with last year’s withered grass, illuminated by the blinding winter light, this endless hill suddenly approached. In this thin woman, whose hand hung in the air, I saw myself, my restless soul.” .

According to Wyeth, "it was a decisive, turning point in his life." He looked into her gray, pensive northern eyes and realized that he wanted to live and write again. He asked: "What is your name?". But his heart already knew - no matter what her name was, no matter where she lived - he could not forget this blond hair, this delicate wheat fluff over her upper lip, this shy blush on her pale cheeks.

This is the most famous cycle of Wyeth’s paintings - there are 240 of them in total. Perhaps an exceptional phenomenon, if not the only one, in the history of American painting. His favorite model was the German Helga Testorf from a neighboring farm; he drew and painted her for 15 years, hiding the work from everyone, even from his wife. It was main topic And main love all his life.

Distant

The relationship between the artist and his model was not interrupted until the end.the story of Wyeth's life. Helga entered the family and looked after her middle-aged friend when the time came for his physical weakness. Andrew Wyeth created the last portrait of his muse in 2002, when Helga was already over seventy.It’s no good to speculate on anything here.

Myself the artist did not want to answer the interviewers’ questions “about Helga”, he only explained that the concept of “love” for him does not mean carnal pleasure, but a spiritual feeling - “toward a favorite object, nature, person, warmth of attitude.” Adding: "This is how your beloved dog sits on your lap and you stroke his head. Love is something beautiful and real." Andrew Wyeth confirmed his amazing creative longevity with this cycle, gossipand eventually stopped.

The canvas depicts a sleeping girl with an extraordinary sense of tenderness. She is afraid of the wind blowing in through the open window, lest it inadvertently disturb her long, sweet sleep. This is Andrew Wyeth's Helga model, which he drew and painted over 15 years. Perhaps an exceptional phenomenon, if not the only one, in the history of American painting

Of course, the experience of generations was not in vain for Wyeth; a kind of fusion took place in his creative consciousness, and in the portraits of Helga one can equally see both Durer’s completeness and the Renaissance principles of picture space. But this is only the sum of its parts. The main thing is not this. The main thing is these always lively eyes the color of icy water, this affectionate mischief in the corners of her plump mouth, and also her tenderness, like light snow, swift, flying...

In the work of Andrew Wyeth, the features characteristic of the American realistic tradition are palpable: idealization of farm America, passion for native places, for the accuracy of the image of the visible, sometimes close to topographical illusionornost. But all this is combined with his inherent subtle poetic perception of reality.and allowed us to connect it with the directionmagical realism. In the paintings of Andrew Wyeth there is a certain tension. He,rather, even surreal than realistic.

In 2007, the artist was awarded the National Medal of Arts, which was presented to him by the President of the United States at the White House.