Wyeth, Andrew Newell

Wyeth, Andrew Newell (wī`əth), 1917–, American painter, b. Chadds Ford, Pa. Wyeth's work has been enormously popular and critically acclaimed since his first one-man show in 1937. He was trained by his father, the noted illustrator N. C. Wyeth. The places and people of Chadds Ford and Cushing, Maine, are his principal subjects and they are portrayed in a meticulous, naturalistic style. The best-known of Wyeth's paintings, Christina's World (1948), is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. His "Helga" pictures, a large group of intimate portraits of a neighbor, painted over many years, were first shown publicly in 1986.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1995); W. M. Corn, ed., The Art of Andrew Wyeth (1973); J. Wilmerding, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures (1987); biography by R. Meryman (1997).

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Wyeth, Andrew Newell 

Born July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, Pa. American artist. Honorary member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1978).

Wyeth, who studied primarily under his father, the illustrator N. C. Wyeth, is a leading representative of American realist painting of the mid-20th century. Working in the medium of tempera, Wyeth chooses the natural setting of Chadds Ford in which to paint his figures. With great attention to detail, he depicts not only the human features of his figures but also the common objects of life found on the earth, as well as other, everyday objects, in all of which he discerns the effects mercilessly wrought by time. Wyeth’s paintings, the most famous of which is Christina’s World (1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York), are marked by a precision of composition and restrained emotional coloring. The artist, who arranges his images in such a way as to achieve a desired mood, invests all his works with profound humanism.

REFERENCE

Matusovskaia, E. M. “Endr’iu Uaies i traditsii amerikanskoi zhivopisi.” In the collection Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie ’74. Moscow, 1975. Pages 83–101.