NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s and Adelson Galleries will hold an exhibition of works by the distinguished American Realist painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) in New York. The exhibition will be open to the public in New York at Christie’s during early September. The exhibit will include approximately forty works of various media including drawings, watercolors, works in dry brush and tempera. The prolific art critic, Li Xian Ting, who has been a major force behind China’s avant-garde movements since the late 1970s, and remains influential today as the director of Songzhuang Art Museum, will provide academic consultation to the exhibit.

The exhibit will span the breadth of Andrew Wyeth’s career and feature a wide range of subject matter including landscapes of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the rural coast of Maine, figural works, studies and fully executed masterworks.

Wyeth’s Influence in China
In 1980s, the works of Andrew Wyeth could already be seen in a variety of art publications in China. Wyeth’s works demonstrate the self-consciousness, calmness and solitudes of an individual mind with a stroke of stability, tranquility and desolation. The unique style and quality in his works opened a door for the Chinese artists, who were just getting to see the world of art at the time, and left influences in their un-established style and personalities. Through imitation and interpretation, they paid tribute to the master with their own works.

The selection of Wyeth’s works demonstrate his different approaches and style of different creative periods, and it is the hope that this exhibition will not only be a memorable visual experience but also initiate a retrospection of the original passions in Chinese art scene.

Exhibition Highlights
The exhibit will showcase Andrew Wyeth’s works representing various periods, subject matter and medium. Highlighting the exhibit will be the premiere of the unpublished and previously unknown work, “The Lovers,” which is loaned directly from the studio of Andrew Wyeth. A drybrush and watercolor on paper, the subject of painting is on Wyeth’s muse Helga Testorf, who is portrayed in nude seated on stool, looking away from the viewer, as the afternoon sun streams in from the adjacent doorway.

Another highlight is Wyeth’s “Ericksons,” a majestic portrait of George Erickson, one of Wyeth’s favorite subjects, at his home in rural Maine. Executed in 1973, the large and rare tempera is imbued with a haunting, plaintive silence that pervades Wyeth’s greatest works, along with his characteristic simplicity and contemplative beauty. Like many of his most celebrated compositions, the picture captures rural American life. “Ericksons” also achieved a world auction record for the artist at Christie’s in May 2007, and is on loan from a private collector.

The exhibit will include the monumental portrait and compelling landscape, “Faraway,” which features the artist’s son, Jamie Wyeth, as a young boy wearing a beaver skin hat. “Faraway” is one of Wyeth’s first drybrush paintings. It was begun as a watercolor, with dry-brush technique for the fur cap.