The one about the evening he showed up, boyish-proud, at a friend’s dinner party, saying, “Look what I’ve got!” Out in the driveway sat a Stutz Bearcat - a celebrity sports car that he used to say he’d acquired in exchange for a painting. There’s the one about Wyeth painting a bonfire and picking up a piece of charred wood to take home to his studio, only to have it burst into flames in the back of his car. International Arts & Artists was honored to organize a limited tour of more than 70 works from the Helga series, which included finished paintings in tempera and dry brush as well as drawings and works in watercolor.Five years after Andrew Wyeth’s death, stories about “America’s artist” still animate this little township at the intersection of Route 1 and the Brandywine River. Since then, portions of the Helga suite have been shown throughout the United States and abroad on special occasions-never more than twice a year, and not every year. On its initial 1987 to 1989 tour, the exhibition traveled under the National Gallery’s auspices to a selection of notable American museums. When The Helga Pictures premiered at Washington’s National Gallery of Art in May of 1987, it was viewed by well over a half-million people.
With the Helga series, Wyeth tested the limits of his imagination using a single model. She was presented in almost every human aspect: clothed, nude, indoors, outdoors, in recognizable settings and against neutral backgrounds. Testorf provided a means for Wyeth to explore the complexity of the human figure.
Wyeth conducted his series of drawings and paintings in almost total secrecy, revealing to no one the existence of the series, the identity of the model, or the extent of the project. The approximately 240 works that resulted from their friendship were investigatory, diverse, and extraordinarily intimate. Testorf was one of the artist’s neighbors in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and for some 14 years she served as Wyeth’s private project. From 1971 to 1985, Andrew Wyeth undertook a long, intensive study of one model, Helga Testorf.
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