Book Description

A dazzling look back at six decades of paintings by America's favorite artist, this is the crowning book of Andrew Wyeth's career. This comprehensive survey reproduces 133 tempera, drybrush, and watercolor paintings and five pencil sketches - the only true retrospective of the artist's work ever published. But what makes this book truly extraordinary are Wyeth's comments about each painting - an "autobiography," told through conversations with Thomas Hoving - which offer fascinating, sometimes unexpected facts about Wyeth's life and art. Based on a retrospective exhibition that originated in Japan and travels to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography includes many seminal paintings from both his Chadds Ford and Maine work - including Distant Thunder, Garret Room, and several paintings of Helga - as well as recent work from the 1990s and some rarely seen images. As Thomas Hoving writes in his introduction, "Wyeth, in essence, has always painted for himself." This beautifully printed, elegantly designed book reveals that self as no other collection has done before.