Andrew Wyeth
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
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Cristina’s World (1948). Andrew Wyeth.
Tempera on panel. 82 cm x 121 cm
Moma. New York, United States
Christina’s World is one of the most recognized images in American art. One of the most popular paintings in that country.
In the early 1930’s, there was a movement that aimed to accurately portray the rural environment of the United States. It was an anti-modernist, avant-garde movement that aimed to preserve tradition, customs, and regional culture. That’s why it’s known as “regionalism.”
The style is unmistakably classical and realistic (contrary to any renewal in the ways of representation that modernity brought with it in art). And we can observe that Wyeth is a very precise realist painter, detailed to the extreme (we can notice it in the brushstrokes he dedicates to each blade of grass).
Andrew Wyeth was very popular at the time, but he would later be overshadowed by the movements that would draw the art world’s attention to the United States (first abstract expressionism, then pop). Ironically, he ended up being considered “too conservative.” It took him some time to be vindicated, but at least that vindication occurred during his lifetime, which is unusual in the history of art.
From the beginning, his popularity was not only due to that “regionalist fervor” that defends the tradition of a proud people, but his works also have a strong charge of sensitivity and existential problems that provoke and stir.
In this painting, he portrays one of his “models” from a neighboring farm, Cristina Olson, who in real life could not use her legs, but did not use a wheelchair, preferring instead to crawl along on her own.
The artist wanted to depict the willpower that human beings are capable of. “The challenge to me,” Wyeth explained, “was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless. If in some small way I have been able in paint to make the viewer sense that her world may be limited physically but by no means spiritually, then I have achieved what I set out to do.”
Recommended links:
American Gothic (1930), Grant Wood.
Nighthawks (1942). Edward Hopper.
Timeline: Moments of Edward Hopper.
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