copyright 1987; Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York"; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
description -
The Helga Pictures are a series of more than 240 paintings and drawings of German model Helga Testorf created by Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) between 1971 and 1985.
Helga "Testy" 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, and they soon moved to Chadds Ford. There she raised a family of four children, and acted as caretaker to farmer Karl Kuerner, an elderly neighbor who was a friend and model for Wyeth.
Wyeth asked Testorf to model for him in 1971, and from then until 1985 he made 45 paintings and 200 drawings of her, many of which depicted her nude. The sessions were a secret even to their spouses. The paintings were stored at the home of his student, neighbor and good friend, Frolic Weymouth.