Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect

An insightful and essential new survey of Wyeth's entire career, situating the milestones of his art within the trajectory of 20th-century American life This major retrospective catalogue explores the impact of time and place on the work of beloved American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009). While previous publications have mainly analyzed Wyeth's work thematically, this publication places him fully in the context of the long 20th century, tracing his creative development from World War I through the new millennium. Published to coincide with the centenary of Wyeth's birth, the book looks at four major chronological periods in the artist's career: Wyeth as a product of the interwar years, when he started to form his own "war memories" through military props and documentary photography he discovered in his father's art studio; the change from his "theatrical" pictures of the 1940s to his own visceral responses to the landscape around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his family's home in Maine; his sudden turn, in 1968, into the realm of erotic art, including a completely new assessment of Wyeth's "Helga pictures"-a series of secret, nude depictions of his neighbor Helga Testorf-within his career as a whole; and his late, self-reflective works, which includes the discussion of his previously unknown painting entitled Goodbye, now believed to be Wyeth's last work.