Andrew Wyeth Fills In the Blanks on Helga Paintings

Artist Andrew Wyeth, breaking silence about his newly unveiled “Helga” paintings, says he kept the works secret for 15 years because he feared public reaction would stifle his creativity. “When you are in the middle of working on something--whether it be writing, painting, sculpture, any field of creative endeavor--if you show a picture and they love it, you become fearful you are going to lose it,” he told the Courier-Gazette newspaper in Rockland, Me. “If they dislike it, you become disheartened. That’s why (his wife) Betsy did not see the paintings,” said Wyeth, 69, who spends his summers in nearby Cushing. The existence of the 240 paintings and sketches, all but one of which feature a model named Helga, was disclosed last week. Although Wyeth had pledged to keep Helga’s identity secret, neighbors in Chadds Ford, Pa., said she is Helga Testorf, a middle-aged wife and mother of four who lives with her husband in a secluded home across town from Wyeth. Wyeth said the collection, which includes a nude titled “Lovers,” is about love, but not in a sexual sense. “Any creative person, whether he is painting a tree, a model, a house or a hill, has to have a deep love for it,” Wyeth said, “and it’s that love you are trying to reach in the work.”

--In the wake of critical controversy and box-office indifference, American National Theater director Peter Sellars will take a yearlong sabbatical, two years after assuming the challenge of trying to create a resident theater group in the nation’s capital. The operation of the theater at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will be discontinued and its staff of six laid off, said center Chairman Roger Stevens. “I definitely want to carry on here,” said Sellars, 28. “But I don’t know what form ANT would take. We’re going to have to wait and see how it will resurface.” Sellars plans to direct a screenplay for an independent film company and pursue writing projects. ANT was launched in July, 1984, with expectations that it would become the nation’s resident theater company, similar to France’s Comedie Francaise. But most of its productions have been met with sharp critical reviews and sluggish sales at the box office.

--Two Soviet high-wire walkers who defected from the Moscow Circus prepared for their entry into the American job market--an audition today with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Bertalina Kazakova and her husband, Nikolia Nikolsky, were scheduled to audition in Lakeland, Fla., for Kenneth Feld, president and producer of the circus. Kazakova and Nikolsky performed their high-wire act for 10 years with the Moscow Circus before defecting last week in Buenos Aires, from where they were flown to the United States.