Kalounna in Frogtown

Stiffly, almost confrontationally posed, a slender, shaggy-haired adolescent boy dominates a flat landscape in Jamie Wyeth's large Kalounna in Frogtown. His Asian features form an incongruous complement to his setting: the traditionally American red-shuttered wood-frame house in the left distance, the unloaded red Ford semi-trailer truck on the right, and the boy's matching red T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the television drama "Dallas," the most popular such series at the time Wyeth painted this work. The tension between the boy and his surroundings is suggested in his hands—one tightly clenched in a fist, the other open with fingers awkwardly splayed—and in the background in the contrast between the starkly sheared branches of the trees and the material abundance represented by the large house and powerful truck. Framed against a pale but overcast sky, the figure is positioned as if slightly above the viewer, whom he fixes with a steady gaze, his expression closed.

Wyeth is said to have found the background scene for this painting in a small community called Frogtown, some miles from his own farm in Chadds Ford in southeastern Pennsylvania. He was attracted to the correspondence between the house's red shutters and the color of the large truck parked nearby. He used this background in his image of a more near-at-hand human subject. Kalounna was the eleven-year-old son of a family of Laotian "boat people," refugees who fled to the United States in the early 1970s as a result of their country's civil war. After several years in their adopted country, Kalounna's family were hired as caretakers on Wyeth's farm. In the process of assimilating, each family member assumed an American first name, but Wyeth retained the boy's Laotian name in his title to emphasize his sense of unease as an outsider in American culture. Kalounna in Frogtown is a portrait of the modern immigrant experience, drawn, in the artistic tradition of the Wyeth family, from the artist's immediate surroundings in rural Pennsylvania.

An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (organizer). Venues: The Academy of the Arts of the USSR, Leningrad, USSR, March 11–April 12, 1987; The Academy of the Arts of the USSR, Moscow, USSR, April 24–May 31, 1987; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., July 4–August 30, 1987; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, September 29–November 29, 1987; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 13, 1987–February 14, 1988; The Setagaya Museum, Tokyo, Japan, March 10–April 21, 1988; Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy, May 17–June 20, 1988; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, July 12–August 29, 1988; Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, September 17–November 22, 1988. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 1995.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

The Wyeths: N. C., Andrew and Jamie, Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art, Marietta, Georgia (organizer). Venue: Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art, Marietta, Georgia, January 30–May 3, 1998. [exh. cat.]

Selected Works from the Collections: Two Hundred Years of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–August 27, 1997.

Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 9–July 9, 2000.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–July 1, 2001.

American Moderns, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 14–October 7, 2001.

A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 13–October 31, 2004.

Terra Collection-in-Residence, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, July 24, 2022–July 31, 2025.

    

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Kalounna in Frogtown, Jamie Wyeth. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 1995. Ill. (black & white).

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