Exhibition Provides New Insights into Masterworks by Andrew Wyeth Includes Rarely Seen Work Companion Exhibition to Feature Wyeth-Inspired Photographs by James Welling

An exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum will explore Andrew Wyeth’s use of views—both interior and exterior—while revealing the intricacies of his artistic process. Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond, on view from March 24, 2012 through July 22, 2012, brings together three of Wyeth’s masterworks from the Wadsworth’s permanent collection with a group of related loans including several from the Wyeth family collection.



The exhibition aims to illustrate the artist’s recurring use of distinctive motifs such as windows and half-opened doors. In addition, the exhibition will include related preparatory studies in watercolor and pencil, many of which have never before been exhibited. Documents and letters from the museum’s archive will provide critical insight into Wyeth’s subject matter, working methods, and technique. The exhibition aims to “look beyond” previously held assumptions about Wyeth’s work, which often focus on biographical context, and suggest fresh interpretations that position the works in a larger historical and artistic framework.



“Wyeth’s works give new meaning to traditional symbols of transition and yearning like windows, doors, and views through rooms with his somber and solitary images,” said Erin Monroe, Assistant Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. “The superb works in the museum’s collection, the earliest of which was acquired in 1950, just months after it was painted, in combination with his preparatory drawings and documents from the Wadsworth’s own archive, will give visitors fresh insight into this facet of his oeuvre. This exhibition will also suggest new modes of interpretation for these paintings—framing them in the context of the era in which they were made and the artistic traditions on which they build.”



Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond will shed light on an extremely productive period of Wyeth’s career from 1940 to 1960 by gathering together the preparatory studies for three major paintings—Northern Point (1950), April Wind (1952), and Chambered Nautilus (1956). Studies in pencil, watercolor, and drybrush will introduce to the public the artist’s mastery of a variety of media, and illustrate his method of building an evocative image from an initial, cursory sketch or drawing. The exhibition will also include materials from the Wadsworth Atheneum’s archive. Letters between the artist and curators and directors not only provide insight into Wyeth’s creative process and also demonstrate the museum’s continuing interest in the artist.



The exhibition will be accompanied by a full color catalogue with essays by exhibition curator, Erin Monroe and Patterson Sims, independent New York City curator and writer.



A companion exhibition, organized by Patricia Hickson, the museum’s Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art, titled James Welling: “Wyeth” features a selection of color photographs that depict Wyeth’s studio as well as the subjects and sites of his most iconic paintings, including several works in the Wyeth show. Los Angeles—based contemporary art photographer and Hartford native James Welling (b. 1951) was profoundly affected by the work of Andrew Wyeth as a budding painter and recently reconnected to the influence of Wyeth on his photographic work. Created in 2010 and 2011, in Wyeth territory―Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and Cushing, Maine―Welling’s photographs capture elements of Wyeth’s muted palette, abstraction, and precision that initially attracted and have long influenced Welling’s art.



Public programs include lectures by James Welling, Victoria Wyeth, the granddaughter of Andrew Wyeth, and Joyce Hill Stoner, conservator to the Wyeth family of artists.



About The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is located at 600 Main St. in Hartford, Connecticut. The Museum is open Wednesdays to Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Please visit www.wadsworthatheneum.org for more information.