Exhibition | Watermedia in the Age of Wyeth

Oct 2, 2024 — Feb 16, 2025

When he was only 20, Andrew Wyeth (1917 – 2009) enjoyed a sold-out exhibition of his watercolors at New York City’s Macbeth Gallery in 1937. The young artist was heralded for revitalizing the medium, and his career was launched. Over the next 72 years, as his methods evolved from broad abstracted washes of color to the intricate hatching of his signature drybrush technique, Wyeth firmly established his mastery of modern watermedia, which may include watercolor, gouache, tempera, acrylic, or ink (and combinations thereof).

Selected from the GCMA permanent collection, this exhibition offers the opportunity to witness Andrew Wyeth’s artistic evolution over time and invites comparison with other accomplished watermedia luminaries who worked during Wyeth’s life. Beginning with the Impressionist movement (Childe Hassam, Jane Peterson) of the 1920s through early variations on Modernism (Charles Burchfield, Will Henry Stevens), the exhibition includes examples of Regionalism (Thomas Hart Benton, Anne Goldthwaite), Abstract Expressionism (Hans Hofmann), Post-war multiplicity (Jasper Johns), and contemporary Realism (Stephen Scott Young, Hubert Shuptrine), before arriving at Wyeth’s son Jamie, allowing viewers to trace the broad sweep of both subject matter and technical innovation in water-based media of the 20th century.