Christina's World

An exhibition on the Wyeth family has just opened in Paris and if I have the courage, I'll go and see it though Christina's World, one of my favourite paintings ( above) is not on show. Much of his work is painted with egg tempera, a mixture of pigment, egg yolk and water which apparently is very time-resistant.

His Helga paintings created a sensation because unbknownst by his wife and her husband, Helga, a neighbour, was his model (and perhaps also his mistress) between 1971 and 1985  for a series of intimate, sometimes nude paintings.







The color of her skin, her high cheeckbones, in short her typical German features attracted him much.

The uncovering of this series of works reintroduced eroticism in the world of a very popular painter that many critics labelled as a rural, slightly nostalgic and conservative painter. 

Though he had produced other nudes, the whiff of scandal behind these series of pictures and the fact that he devoted about 100 pictures to one model make it an exception in American painting.

The story of this family of artists is quite impressive,  I hope I'll muster enough courage to visit this exhibition. :)




 
More  photos  in the slideshow.