The Helga Pictures
The Helga Pictures are a series of more than 240 paintings and drawings of German model Helga Testorf (born c. 1933 or c. 1939) created by Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) between 1971 and 1985.
Creation
Helga Testorf was a neighbor of Wyeth's in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and over the course of fifteen years posed for Wyeth indoors and out of doors, nude and clothed, in attitudes that reminded writers of figures painted by Botticelli and Édouard Manet. To John Updike, her body "is what Winslow Homer's maidens would have looked like beneath their calico."
Born in Germany, Helga entered a Prussian Protestant convent chosen by her father in 1955. After becoming seriously ill she left the convent and lived in Mannheim, where she studied to be a nurse and a masseuse. In 1957, she met John Testorf, a German-born, naturalized American citizen, whom she married in 1958. By 1961 they were living in Philadelphia, where she worked in a tannery, but they soon moved to Chadds Ford. There she raised a family that would grow to include four children, and acted as caretaker to farmer Karl Kuerner, an elderly neighbor who was a friend and model for Wyeth.
Podcasts:
Helga Pictures
ALBUMS
- Build It Up released:
