Schoelkopf Gallery, in collaboration with Adelson Galleries, is pleased to present the gallery’s first important exhibition of Jamie Wyeth’s (b. 1946) portraits celebrating his collaboration and lasting obsessions with Pop Art icon Andy Warhol and acclaimed Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev. The exhibition, “Jamie Wyeth: Portraits of Andy Warhol and Rudolf Nureyev,” opens to the public at Schoelkopf Gallery’s Tribeca location on September 12 and will remain on view through October 17, 2025.
In 2023, Jamie Wyeth rediscovered a breathtaking hidden cache of portraits that his late wife and muse Phyllis Mills Wyeth stashed away in 1978, shortly after the triumphant success of Wyeth and Warhol’s exhibition “Portraits of Each Other” at Coe Kerr Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side. These works will be seen by the public for the first time and invite us to view the magical connection Wyeth maintained with two of the 20th century’s most magnetic personalities.
The Warhol Year: A Revolutionary Exchange
Jamie Wyeth’s celebrity allowed unfettered access to Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1976. There Wyeth and Warhol created a series of works which formed the groundbreaking exhibition “Portraits of Each Other” at Coe Kerr Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side.
The opening exhibition was a cultural phenomenon and raucous party.
“There was a line of people on 82nd Street around to Madison Avenue going up the block. The crowd was huge and enthusiastic, and at one point Fred Woolworth wondered if the second floor of the townhouse gallery was going to collapse,” remarked Warren Adelson, then Director of Coe Kerr.
The morning after the opening, The New York Times headline read “At Gallery, The Crowd Was Ogling Itself,” and memorably coined the phrase: “The Patriarch of Pop paints the Prince of Realism, and vice versa.”
The review focused primarily on the spectacle, but the underlying story lay in the portraits themselves, and the public’s rapid voyeurism eager to see first-hand Warhol’s glamorous, celebrity-inspired portrayal of Wyeth against Wyeth’s unflinchingly realist depiction of Warhol.
“What most affected me about Warhol was his incredible sense of wonder about everything,” said Jamie Wyeth.
Warhol credited Wyeth’s realistic approach, appreciating his portrayal in Wyeth’s work despite – or perhaps because of – its uncompromising rawness and stark contrast to the glamorous, celebrity-inspired silkscreened portrait that Warhol produced of Wyeth.
Portraits of Rudolf Nureyev
The following year, Wyeth began painting the celebrity ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a taciturn artist who remained constantly concerned with Wyeth’s every brush stroke. The dancer’s magnetic presence both on and off the stage fascinated Wyeth.
“He was exactly off stage as he was on stage,” Wyeth explained. “I mean that magnetism that you saw on stage—everybody couldn’t take their eyes off him. He’d come to this farm to stay, and it was like having a panther in the house.”
As Wyeth and his wife Phyllis formed a strong bond with the dancer, Nureyev became one of Wyeth’s most frequently painted portrait subjects, inspiring some of the artist’s most dramatic and energetic portraits.
Throughout his career, Wyeth returned repeatedly to the memories of both Warhol and Nureyev, long after both men had passed.
“You know there are many ghosts in my head of the people I painted, the people that meant something to me,” he reflects.
This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to witness the artist’s relationships with his subjects—far from formal portraits, this group of works represent deeply personal investigations.
About Jamie Wyeth
Jamie Wyeth, a third-generation artist, carries forward the formidable legacy of his family—his father, Andrew Wyeth, and grandfather, N.C. Wyeth—while boldly reimagining realism for the contemporary era.
Blending oil, watercolor, and tempera with fearless experimentation, Wyeth’s work traverses a rich spectrum of subjects: from the windswept coastlines of Maine and the pastoral quietude of Pennsylvania to intimate, psychologically charged portraits of cultural icons like Andy Warhol. His distinctive realist style—marked by dramatic lighting, saturated shadows, and surreal undertones—imbues each work with emotional intensity and narrative intrigue, revealing as much about the artist’s inner world as his subjects.
