Word: drybrush
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...detail that would be utterly fascinating with a greater artist -- a Manet, a Degas or even a Winslow Homer -- but that at Wyeth's level of achievement seems almost tiresome. The bulk of the show is pencil sketches and watercolors, grouped around a dozen or so finished images in drybrush and tempera. To study an artist's sketches is to go behind the scenes of his talent, to see how the mechanisms of his pictorial thought work; one sees each twist in the evolution of form and idea. But the interest of such a spectacle depends on the extent...
...some scoop. For 15 years, from 1970 to 1985, Wyeth had labored in secret on an enormous collection of works: 246 in all, including sketches, studies, drawings, 32 watercolors, twelve drybrush paintings and five temperas. Not even his wife was aware of the magnitude of the undertaking. Moreover, almost all of them were of a middle-aged German whom Wyeth identified only as Helga and who lived near the Wyeths' winter home in Chadds Ford, Pa. Artist and model met in various places over the years, and the resulting works, many of them nudes, are streaked with an intensity both...
...totem placed on its side. But no: there is a hint of life and movement. Helga's hip has curled out of its confining sheet, perhaps in response to the sound of the cascade outside her window that gives the work its title. Following the gestation from sketch to drybrush is like flipping through a family album of Atget X rays...