They visited his father’s studio and then his own studio where Andy said wanted to show Nancy something - something that she couldn’t tell anyone else about.

After a meal together, Tom and Betsy settled down to consult on an upcoming show at the Met, and Andy took off with Nancy in his Stutz Bearcat to show her the area. The Helga Paintings were to be revealed upon Andrew Wyeth’s death, but 5 years after his passing, they’re still as mysterious as they were back in 1985. Hoving remembers visiting the Wyeths in Chadds Ford in early 1976 with her husband, Tom Hoving, then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Helga pictures are often described as having been a secret - even from Wyeth’s wife, Betsy.īut Nancy Hoving remembers them as more of an open secret.Īndrew Wyeth “liked to have secrets,” Hoving recalls, “so he could reveal them.” Over the course of more than 15 years, Andrew Wyeth created 250 secret paintings. Featuring his Helga pictures, 44 of them are closely. And the collection created a further stir when it was bought by a Philadelphia businessman for several million and sold three years later to a Japanese buyer for tens of millions. This art documentary focuses on the works of artist Andrew Wyeth. His best-known work, Christina’s World (1948), depicts a young women laying in the grass and looking towards a farmhouse.

Andrew Wyeth’s “Helga pictures” - a cache of some 240 works, including nudes, of a single model done between 19 - stunned the art world when they were revealed in the mid 1980s, inspiring a show at the National Gallery. (American, 19172009) Andrew Wyeth was a widely celebrated American artist who specialized in realist watercolor and tempera paintings of people and landscapes. Wyeth was 53 and at work on the painting Evening at Kuerner’s when he first encountered Helga, who was caring for Karl Kuerner.

Andrew wyeth helga