His Most Famous Painting (Christina"s World) - Andrew Wyeth

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Renowned painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was a 'Realist' U.
S.
artist, whose body of work concentrated mainly on people and places.
Often, he was referred to as the 'Painter of the People,' who believed in the representation of the finer emotions of life.
He also drew criticism from certain corners due to his realist style in the era of 'Abstraction.
' His art was termed as depressing and full of saddened expressions.
However, Andrew's mass appeal, and claim on some of the rare international honors, made him a living legend.
In the year 1948, he painted, what became the most sought after and replicated painting of all times, "Christina's World.
" Wyeth was a master of 'Tempera Painting,' which involves the use of egg yolk with pigments (water-soluble) as a fast drying coloring medium.
He has employed the same technique in his masterwork that touches the world until date.
The work is set in gessoed base on a medium, 32.
25" X 47.
75" wood panel.
The protagonist of the piece, Christina, was a real life character and was Wyeth's neighbor, who suffered from a muscular degenerative syndrome of a serious kind, throughout her life.
There is no clarity about the possibility of her being plagued by polio.
Wyeth painted "Christina's World" when she was 55 years of age and had lost her power of locomotion.
Despite her disability, Christina was a strong woman of grit and determination, who refused all kind of medical help or sympathy.
This spirit of hers that did not wither with age and sufferings inspired Wythe to paint her as a young girl, crawling towards her goal, her home.
Andrew had seen Christina dragging like this to her friend's place, which was almost an 800 foot distance.
Her thin arms in "Christina's World" manifest the signs of growing weakness.
She is portrayed as wearing a pink colored dress, which 'real' Christina had designed for herself for her nephew's wedding, some years back.
She is facing away from the viewer and towards her abode, weak, yet determined.
The painting features an open grassy field and Christina's grey colored house at its far end and similar other, more distant establishment.
Wythe has painted her house, which is still in existence, almost with a reality, although a little more wilted.
The grassy field in the piece is not green, rather it is ripe brown and earthy, somewhere to signify the enveloping loneliness and the tragedy of Christina's life.
The dullness of the daytime sky in the piece also conveys similar sentiments.
Currently, a part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "Christina's World" still stirs the world of art the way it did at its debut.
The lonely figure of a, seemingly, helpless women in a wide field, dragging towards a distant dream has been making viewers identify with her.
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