Andrew Wyeth’s Helga Pictures: An Intimate Study
Through Jan. 5
Cheekwood Museum of Art
1200 Forrest Park Dr.
Hours: 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat.; 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Sun.
For information, call 356-8000
In 1971 artist Andrew Wyeth began a series of 240 paintings, watercolors and drawings that would reshape his image as an American realist. In these works, Wyetah explores the image of Helga Testorf, a neighbor of the artist’s in Chadds Ford, Penn. Her hair in long braids, she is depicted clothed and nude, indoors and out, asleep and awake, in all seasons of the year and at all times of the day.
The story of how Wyeth created such an intimate study of one woman over a period of 15 years—and kept it a secret from everyone, including his wife—made art headlines around the world when the works went public in 1986. First shown in 1987 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where 558,443 people attended the exhibition, the “Helga Pictures” have been accorded several major exhibitions since.
Now 70 images from the Helga series are here in Nashville, and 16 years after they took the art world by storm, they still cause a stir. “This is the first time the Helga Pictures have been presented on such a grand scale in the Southeast United States,” says Cheekwood museum director Jack Becker. “They represent the last great subject Wyeth turned to in his long career.” Becker notes that Wyeth was known for depicting scenes and people from the Maine and Pennsylvania communities where he has lived most of his life. (The artist is now 85.) But while Wyeth often included people in his works, his paintings and drawings of Helga are by far his most intensive exploration of a single human subject. “Until the Helga Pictures, no one ever thought of Wyeth as painting in the tradition of the nude,” Becker adds. “To see these nude studies of his was really quite startling at the time.”
The story of who Helga is and how she and Wyeth collaborated on the project continues to intrigue viewers. When Wyeth first met the Prussian-born Helga, she was 32 years old. She was a married mother who worked as a baker, music teacher and caretaker. The married Wyeth was 54 and a world-famous artist. When he first began to paint her, Helga was a stranger, but over the years their relationship deepened into friendship.
Rumors of a love affair between the two were fueled by Wyeth’s wife and business manager, Betsy, when she suggested at the time that the portraits were about love—perhaps as a calculated move to enhance the value of the art. As for the artist himself, he told Newsweek that all painting is about love, saying, “I mean, you’re painting rocks, or you’re painting an animal, or a tree, or a hill, but you should love it.” Meanwhile, as she has for over 30 years, Helga declines to talk about Wyeth or his paintings of her. Yet she remains close to the aging artist, acting as his caregiver now. Knowledge of the continuing friendship between the artist and his model adds an intimate footnote to the Helga Pictures. “They really occupy a unique position in American art,” Becker agrees. “People are fascinated to see how entranced Wyeth was by his subject and how thoroughly he investigated it.”
