Andre Wyeth's Windows

American artist Andre Wyeth (1917-2009) loved to paint windows, and now the National Gallery in Washington is mounting an exhibit showcasing his obsession:

In the spring of 2009 the National Gallery of Art was given one of Andrew Wyeth’s most famous paintings, Wind from the Sea (1947 -- above). Completed early in the artist’s career, the painting captured the moment when an ocean breeze flowing through an open window gently lifted tattered curtains. During the course of the next sixty years, Wyeth returned repeatedly to the subject of windows, producing more than three hundred works on this theme. Spare and elegant, these paintings are free of the narrative element associated with the artist’s better-known figural compositions. The abstract qualities of his work are therefore more readily apparent, and Wyeth emerges as an artist deeply concerned with the visual complexities posed by the transparency, symbolism, and geometric structure of windows.

Evening at Kuerners, 1970

Frostbitten, 1962

The Pikes, 1965

Widow's Walk, 1990