The Kass, 1975
Watercolor on paper
22 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches
Biography
Andrew Wyeth was an artist who remained staunchly committed to figuration and naturalism while the rest of the art world was attuned to modernism and abstraction. Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Wyeth is considered one of the premier representational painters of the 20th century. His subject matter encompasses the natural, architectural, and personal elements of the world around him: the farms, mills, and stone buildings of the Brandywine River countryside, the parched gray and white clapboard houses of the Maine coast, and, after his father N.C. Wyeth’s tragic automobile accident in 1945, the incorporation of the notable faces of his neighbors in Cushing, Maine and Chadds Ford.
The first living American artist to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wyeth’s style is characterized by impeccable naturalism and attention to detail. His compositions permeate a sense of quietude and an existential quality, emphasized by his choices of stark subject matter and challenging paint mediums. Wyeth preferred working with substances that dried quickly, required concentration and a meticulous hand, and allowed him to build upon crisp translucent layers. The early Renaissance egg tempera technique, a rare medium for 20th century artists and introduced to him by his brother-in-law Peter Hurd, lent itself particularly well to this style, in addition to watercolor and drybrush.
