Zama Vanessa HelderRed Earth and Spotted Cows1942
1942
About the Item
- Creator:Zama Vanessa Helder (1903 - 1968, American)
- Creation Year:1942
- Dimensions:Height: 17.75 in (45.09 cm)Width: 21.5 in (54.61 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2311800422
Zama Vanessa Helder
West Coast artist Z. Vanessa Helder seems to have been prepared from the start to pursue an independent course in art. Her full name, Zama Vanessa Helder, curiously was chosen by her parents to represent a town in North Africa and the name of a former music teacher, respectively, but she preferred the more mysterious Z. Vanessa Helder, or more simply “Zelma.” She was born in Lynden, Washington, a small town near Spokane. Her mother, Anna Wright Helder, was an artist, so it is not surprising that she started painting at a young age, and that she decided early on to pursue a career as a professional artist.
Helder enrolled at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she received her first formal studies. Following her graduation, Helder began her professional career in Seattle, where she established herself as a specialist in watercolor. She was recognized for her artistic talents in 1934, when she was awarded a two-year scholarship by the Art Students League, New York. She was one of only ten outstanding artists from the United States so awarded. At the League, she studied with Frank Vincent DuMond, George Picken, and Robert Brackman. Helder’s course of study at the Art Students League proved to be enormously influential. She not only refined her watercolor technique, but also added oil painting and lithography to her repertoire. Furthermore, her exposure to contemporary American modernism, which was then the dominant mode in the New York art world, had a decided impact on the development of her own work.
Soon after her arrival in New York City and subsequent matriculation at the Art Students League, Helder’s career accelerated rapidly, in a way only possible in the New York art world. In 1935, she began to participate in a number of group shows in New York galleries and clubs, including the New York Watercolor Club, and she was elected that year to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. In 1937, she was given her first “one-man” show at the Grant Studios, New York, an institution with which she maintained a relationship for several years.
During this period in New York, Helder frequently sent works to Seattle for exhibition. She remained the darling of Seattle’s art society, with frequent reports of her activities in New York appearing in the local newspapers. After she completed her studies at the Art Students League, Helder returned to Seattle, where for many years she was a popular local figure, noted as much for her art as for her idiosyncratic behavior, which included walking “Sniffy,” her pet skunk, prominently throughout the streets of Seattle. She also worked locally as a WPA artist, painting murals in various civic buildings. She exhibited annually at the Seattle Art Museum from 1936 to 1941, capped by winning a prize in 1936, and holding a solo exhibition there in 1939. Helder also participated in exhibitions throughout the West, including at the San Francisco Museum of Art, California, in 1936-37; the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, in 1936; and the Denver Art Museum, Colorado, in 1938 and 1940.
About 1939, Helder moved to Spokane, where she helped found the Spokane Art Center, an art school at which she was an instructor in both watercolor and lithography. She spent three productive years there until 1941, when the federal government, which had funded the center from its inception, canceled its financial support. Later that year, Helder returned to New York, and soon after married Robert S. J. Paterson, an industrial architect. Helder, ever the individualist, retained her distinctive maiden name. In 1943, the couple moved to Los Angeles, California, where she remained until her death in 1968. She was as active as ever, exhibiting annually at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from 1945 to 1948, as well as at a number of Southern California institutions until the late 1950s. Throughout her career, she remained a committed watercolorist, exhibiting regularly at the American Water Color Society, from 1936 to 1958, and the California Water Color Society, from 1939 to 1958. Today her work is held in a number of museum collections, including the Newark Museum, New Jersey; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; and the Cheney Cowles Museum, Spokane.
Helder’s style is notable for the sharp, almost austere precision of her drawing and her coolly modulated palette. Her work certainly suggests a Precisionist linearity and objectivity that one normally associates with artists such as Charles Sheeler and Ralston Crawford. However, unlike these artists, who typically isolate elements of machinery and architecture from nature, Helder usually juxtaposes man-made objects with natural ones, treating all elements with the same cold, objective treatment. Her best works are winter scenes, which, because of the naturally stark character of the season, are complemented by her uncompromising eye.
The high point of Helder’s career came in 1943, when she was represented by 12 watercolors in “American Realists and Magic Realists,” a huge exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition included work from past American masters, such as Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer, and contemporary artists, including Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Louis Lozowick, Ben Shahn, and Andrew Wyeth. The fact that Helder was represented alongside these artists is a testament to the popularity of her art and the singularity of her vision.
(Biography provided by Hirschl & Adler)
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: New York, NY
- Return PolicyThis item cannot be returned.
- The GatewayBy Eleanor Parke CustisLocated in New York, NYSigned (lower right): ELEANOR PARKE CUSTISCategory
20th Century American Realist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsPaper, Gouache
- Fishing Camp on the Labrador CoastBy William BradfordLocated in New York, NYIn 1852, twenty-nine year old William Bradford was a failing shopkeeper in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. With a wife and child at home, Bradford, by his own admission, “spent too much time in painting to succeed” in business. Rescued from insolvency by his well-to-do in-laws, this is not the beginning of a narrative that generally leads to a happy ending. Not so with Bradford, who ultimately found international fame and fortune as a painter of arctic seascapes and dramatic marine paintings. William Bradford, the artist, was a lineal descendant of the 17th-century Separatist leader William Bradford, a founder of the Plymouth Plantation, signer of the Mayflower Compact and Governor of the Plymouth Colony. Our Bradford born to a New Bedford ship outfitter in Fairhaven, Massachusetts By the nineteenth century, this line of Bradfords were Quakers, living on the tract purchased nearly two centuries earlier by their pilgrim ancestor. Fairhaven, across the mouth of the Acushnet River from the whaling center of New Bedford was described by a New York journalist in 1857 as “the Brooklyn of New Bedford” (Home Journal, January 3, 1857). Young Bradford displayed an early predilection for the arts, but his Quaker parents were disinclined to support this particular pursuit. After working in his father’s business and then for a dry goods merchant in New Bedford, by 1849 Bradford had set up in New Bedford as a “merchant tailor” offering outfits for “those going to California,” “seamen’s clothing,” custom-tailored “piece goods...Category
19th Century American Realist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Paper, Oil
- PropBy Randall ExonLocated in New York, NYOil on canvasCategory
2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- World Trade Center Reflecting Pools and Harbor #4By Diana HorowitzLocated in New York, NYDiana Horowitz painted World Trade Center Reflecting Pools and Harbor #1 during her tenure as a guest artist on the 48th floor of the re-built 7 World Trade Center. When 7 World Trad...Category
2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings
MaterialsLinen, Oil
- Untitled (The Avenue of Stones)By Colin HuntLocated in New York, NYColin Hunt (b. 1973) is a Brooklyn, NY-based artist working primarily in egg tempera and watercolor. His recent series of landscapes of the Avebury stone circle outside of London are...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Photorealist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Egg Tempera
- Untitled (Dead Low)By Colin HuntLocated in New York, NYIn Colin Hunt’s new paintings, myriad tiny rocks, grains of sand, and strands of rockweed form a coastal beach, while lush forests pierce a crystalline sky. Elsewhere, palpable mists...Category
2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings
MaterialsPanel, Egg Tempera
- Meneses coast original watercolor paper expressionist paintingBy Josep MenesesLocated in CORAL GABLES - MIAMI, FLcoast original watercolor paper expressionist painting. This Catalan painter, settled for years in Mallorca, offers a series of landscapes in which the natural is treated in the imp...Category
1990s Expressionist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsWatercolor, Handmade Paper
- "Andromeda" Large Scale Watercolor Galaxy painting by Thomas BroadbentBy Thomas BroadbentLocated in New York, NYAt over 11 feet in length, Broadbent’s “Andromeda” galaxy watercolor painting captures the spectacle and wonder one feels when looking at the stars in the night sky. In this large sc...Category
2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings
MaterialsWatercolor, Archival Paper
- "Moon Arc", Multi-panel black and white watercolor painting installationBy Thomas BroadbentLocated in New York, NY87"x149" multi-panel installation. This watercolor painting installation is created on 36 paper panels and is inspired by a view of the moon. The dee...Category
2010s Contemporary Landscape Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsWatercolor, Archival Paper
- Panoramic View over Naples Bay 19th century Watercolor by Richardson RWSBy Thomas Miles Richardson IILocated in Stockholm, SEUnsigned, but it is attributed to Thomas Miles Richardson Jr., R.W.S. (1813 - 1890), since the similar work was sold through Christies in 1998 (same size with signature and date 1861...Category
Late 19th Century Realist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsWood, Paper, Watercolor, Cardboard
- Watercolor Landscape - Lone Tree in Front of HouseLocated in Houston, TXLone tree gouache painting with light green colors and aqua painted doors on grey paper by French artist RB, 1960. Signed and dated on lower right....Category
1960s Landscape Paintings
MaterialsGouache, Paper
- ArchitectureLocated in Genève, GECollage, mixed technique Work on paper Dark brown wood frame with bronze patina bordersCategory
1980s Abstract Geometric Abstract Paintings
MaterialsAdhesive, Gouache, Tissue Paper
Recently Viewed
View AllRead More
With Works Like ‘Yours Truly,’ Arthur Dove Pioneered Abstract Art in America
New York gallery Hirschl & Adler is exhibiting the bold composition by Dove — who’s hailed as the first American abstract painter — at this year’s Winter Show.
Remarkably, Elizabeth Turk’s Sculptures Highlight the Lost Voices of Extinct Birds
In one of the first live and in-person exhibitions at a Manhattan gallery since last spring, the California-based sculptor gives the lost voices of endangered and extinct birds and animals a magnificent embodied form.