Andrew Wyeth is one of the USA’s best known artists. Ever since his big breakthrough with the painting Christina’s World, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1948 he has remained as much loved and topical as discussed. He died early last year at the age of 91. Until the very end he painted.

The life and work of Andrew Wyeth was connected to two main places, his family home at Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, and their summer residence at Cushing on the north east Atlantic coast of Maine. These rural, sparsely populated areas are the constantly recurring settings for his realistic, yet magical, pictorial world.

Nature is at the centre, its light and changing seasons, but it is the human presence that gives his pictures energy and life. His eyes search for histories and memories that have left their traces in both buildings, objects and faces.

The watercolours in this exhibition are devoted to the Olson House. This was a windswept wooden building far out on the headland in Maine where Christina and Alvaro Olson, a brother and sister, spent their whole lives. When Wyeth was only 22 years old he won their confidence and then visited them every summer for the next 30 years. He was fascinated by these remarkable, strong persons and their timeless, arduous self-subsistent housekeeping. But not the least he was drawn to the house itself, its history and details.

This is the first separate exhibition of Andrew Wyeth’s work to be held in Sweden. All the watercolours are on loan from The Marunuma Art Park Collection in Tokyo, Japan.

Andrew Wyeth

Pictures from the exhibition