Wyeth’s ‘Helga’ Paintings to Be Shown in L.A. in ’88

The nation will get its first look at Andrew Wyeth’s sensational “Helga” series, paintings and drawings of his mysterious next-door neighbor, in a six-city tour beginning in May that will include Los Angeles, it was announced today.

Details of the tour, financed by a $250,000 gift from DuPont, were announced at a news conference. About 140 of the 240 works in the Helga series will be displayed first at the National Gallery in Washington, then travel to Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit.

They will not be shown in New York as the Metropolitan Museum of Art rejected an offer to show them.

In Los Angeles, the works will be on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from April 28 to July 10, 1988.

At the same time that the Washington exhibition begins, this May 24, Harry N. Abrams will publish a $40, 208-page book that will serve as the exhibition’s catalogue.

Wyeth had planned to keep the pictures of his Chadds Ford, Pa., neighbor, Helga Testorf, secret until his death. But in August, 1986, the series of works, done over a 15-year span, caused a national sensation when it was revealed they had been purchased for $10 million by art collector Leonard E. B. Andrews.

Only six Helga paintings were not bought by Andrews. Wyeth’s wife owns three of those, and they will be donated to Andrews’ national art project. The other three are owned by private collectors.

In the paintings and drawings, Helga is shown standing and walking, nude and clothed, posing against architectural elements, asleep and awake at different seasons and times of day.

“Such close attention by a painter to one model over so long a period of time is remarkable, if not singular, in the history of American art,” said John Wilmerding, deputy director of the National Gallery.