Andrew Wyeth Looking Out, Looking In

One of Andrew Wyeth's most important paintings, Wind from the Sea, a recent gift to the National Gallery of Art, is also the artist's first full realization of the window as a recurring subject in his art. Wyeth returned to windows over the next sixty years, producing more than 250 that works explore both the formal and conceptual richness of the subject. Spare, elegant and abstract, these paintings are free of the narrative element inevitably associated with Wyeth's better-known figural compositions. In 2014 the Gallery will present an exhibition of a select group of these deceptively 'realistic' works, window paintings that are in truth skilfully manipulated constructions of duty with the visual complexities posed by the transparency, beauty and structure of formal windows. In its exclusive focus on paintings without human subjects, this catalogue will offer a new approach to Wyeth's work, being the first time that his non-figural compositions have been published as a group.