Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures

Yes, this IS one of the great Andrew Wyeth books. Everyone interested in this great American artist will love it. This was my first Wyeth book. It was on my shelf for a long time, and I knew I liked his work. After my retirement in 2001, I began painting with watercolors and looked around for some work I liked for inspiration and found only Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth. Later, I was fortunate to see the Helga show in Omaha and found out how amazing Wyeth really is. I spent hours looking at these paintings trying to figure out how he was able to balance areas of color that looked almost poured on next to areas of almost photographic detail. I have read that that's what they call drybrush technique. Well, maybe so, but I call it sheer genius. As with all Wyeth reproductions in books, this one is good, but after you have seen the actual paintings, they are but pale shadows. Nevertheless, I love this book. It is the next best thing to being near a museum where you can see the originals. Wyeth is indeed an inspiration.

I don't mean that Helga was his lover. Still, the artist has an intense experience of his model, and Helga was his model for 15 years.

This is an outstanding book in lots of ways. The subject matter is beyond belief, and the reproductions are good. The visual content is organized well: major pieces are chronological, and sketches and studies are gouped with the pieces they support. I find it very helpful to see the sketches, and see all the variations that Wyeth tried before committing to a more dmanding piece. Those groups of drawings are drawing lessons themselves, in how to explore a visual idea. The text is a bit thin, and says nearly nothing about Helga herself - not a flaw in the book, so much as a step short of what it could have been.

Most of all, the pictures are simply lovely. Helga was a very handsome woman, in her 50s in the lastest of these pictures. Not 'pretty' maybe, but very beautiful - at least, she is presented as very beautiful, and very real. Some of the nudes studies show her arms crossed, oddly compressing her natural curves. That just makes the pictures more genuine for me, showing her as she is, not made up to some anatomical ideal.

Explanatory text could have been more explanatory, but that's OK. The large majority of the book is just the pictures themselves, and I don't mind being alone with them.

//wiredweird

For well over 25 years I have examined and reviewed countless paintings of the Wyeth family (N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, & Jamie Wyeth) who are all phenomenal painters. But the quality of the Compositions, the details of the clothing, nature and the human figure are an amazing spectacle when you review this book of Andrew's work. What an amazing technician he is.

Whether you're an art collector, painter or art critic you will admit that this book contains some of the most intriguing and interesting art.

Andrew Wyeth is a master at creating depth in each picture. The justaposition of figure to landscape or figure to interior items seems to be a heighted sense of "knowing" in Andrew's work. This book helped me to conclude that Andrew Wyeth is a genius who is in full command of his materials. If you think Steven Spielberg is a great film producer than it won't be hard for you to conclude that Andrew Wyeth is also a great painter.

The details in the picture "Farm Road" are excellent. Helga's hair is detailed as if painted with a laser while the leather strap from the bag she is carrying appears worn like real leather. The muted colors of green, brown and reddish tones in the coat and the rich transparency of light emanating from her cheek are amazingly done with subtlety and richness you will appreciate.

My degree in Accounting allows me to be able to count the hundreds of amazing things that are going on in each work while my degree in Art allows me to appreciate the quality of the brush work and the transparency range in each painting.