Word: helga
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 clinical and erotic. Here was the hidden treasure of a major artist -- the most hallowed member...
...secrets piled on top of secrets lent a lurid glow that was not in the paintings. And the Wyeths, inadvertently or intentionally, added to the titillation. His decision to try to protect the privacy of Helga made the suspicious more so. And Art & Antiques reports that when Betsy Wyeth was asked what the works were about and why her husband had kept them secret, she took a long, pensive pause and replied, "Love." Did Betsy mean that the artist, known for his continuing and intimate relationships with the subjects of his paintings, was having an affair with his model...
...With Wyeth walking around with a too-pleased-with-himself-for-words smile on his face and his wife, Betsy, talking about the paintings in terms of love and lovers, the entire episode smacks of a high-gloss publicity stunt. After all, he won't even discuss the Helga paintings with anyone--all he's agreed to do is to clarify what his wife's been saying about the artist/model relationship so that it will not be construed as anything but absolutely above-board...
...Johann Sebastian Bach while sifting through the Yale University music archives. No thrills this time around, though, just a well-placed feeder in last September's issue of Art and Antiques magazine that set the Carl Bernsteins and Robert Woodwards of the art world hot on the trail of Helga...
...paintings are the same. Helga is another Christina in another world, this time more in tune with the essential earth than before, possibly a reflection of a more sagacious and older Wyeth's point of view. With age comes wisdom but also occasionally paranoia. Perhaps 69-year-old Wyeth felt that if he never said a word about the paintings while he was still alive, they would be misunderstood. Perhaps our castigation of the artist for his mute revelation is too harsh and premature. The calm and gentleness of his hidden secrets excuses almost anything...