Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986
Object-Jamie Wyeth, Kalounna in Frogtown
The son and grandson of important artists, Jamie Wyeth started to paint at a very young age. He continued their tradition of realist painting and often found inspiration in rural Pennsylvania and Maine. He is known for his immersive approach to portraiture, trying to “become” the person he depicts. A young boy, seeming at once fragile and defiant, dominates this large composition,. One hand is clenched in a fist while the other is tense and open. His name is Kalounna, and his parents, refugees from Laos, worked as caretakers on the Wyeth farm. His red T-shirt echoes the red trailer truck to the right and red shutters in the background. The shirt features the logo of the popular television series Dallas and may suggest the boy’s desire to assimilate to his newly adopted country. Painted in Frogtown, Pennsylvania, this highly detailed canvas evokes the tensions between nature and machine, childhood and adolescence, and native and foreign.
Learn more about this painting on the Terra Foundation website.
Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986
Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Telegraph Poles with Buildings, 1917

Construction, 1915

Peinture, 1917–18

Painting No. 50, 1914–15

Nature Symbolized #3: Steeple and Trees, 1911–12

Sails, 1911–12

Welcome to Our City, 1921

Boy with Cow, 1921

Super Table, 1925

Purple and Green Leaves, 1927

Boat Going through Inlet, c. 1929

The Green Chair, 1928

Politics, 1931

Brooklyn Bridge, on the Bridge, 1930

Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934

Red Amaryllis, 1937

Room Space, 1937–38

Adolescence, 1947

Highway, 1953

Topcat Boy, 1970

Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948

Passing Show, 1951

Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986