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Helen West Heller"Scribbler in Autumn" Modernist, Figures in Landscape, Abstract elements 1952
1952
About the Item
Helen West Heller
Scribbler in Autumn, 1952
Monogrammed and dated lower left; signed, titled and dated on the reverse
Oil on board
47 x 38 inches
After growing up close to nature as a child in Illinois, Heller spent much of her adult life in urban centers. She studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts in the 1890s and later at the Art Students League in New York. In the early years she struggled for recognition, and when her work was rejected for conventional exhibitions, she became a founding member of the Chicago No-Jury Society for artists outside the establishment. In 1928 she published her poetry and her images in a small book, The Migratory Urge.
An activist during the volatile period of the 1930s, Heller was a member of several left-leaning artists’ organizations and attended the first American Artists’ Congress, Artists Against War and Fascism, in 1936. The group selected her woodcut “Reforestation” as one of 100 prints featured in its publication, America Today, and circulated it nationwide in a series of exhibitions characterized by socially conscious images that reflected the world outside the artist’s studio. She created paintings, prints, and murals for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project during the Great Depression. Participation in the WPA gave her some much-needed exposure, and by the late 1930s Heller exhibited her work more widely at museums and galleries.
In 1947 the Oxford University Press issued Woodcuts U.S.A., a publication with 20 of Heller’s prints and quotes from American writers. The following year she was recognized as an associate member of the National Academy of Design. The Smithsonian showed 35 of her prints in a solo exhibition in 1949, in generous recognition of which she presented eight titles now in the museum’s Graphic Arts Collection: “Alabama Biochemist,” “American Soil” (triptych), “Baseball: A Close Decision,” “Companioned,” “Milennium,” and “Nocturne.” Her work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress, which purchased her prints through its prestigious Pennell Prize program.
Over her career, Heller worked in mosaics, oils, and murals, but she is best known for her woodcuts, which feature elaborate textures and patterns. Her artistic credo, as outlined in a letter to Smithsonian curator Jacob Kainen at the time of her 1949 exhibition, focused on composition. “Composition is a science: in its lower levels it is a branch of mathematics, in its exalted uses it is a branch of psychology. Next in importance is powerful line, simple enough to be penetrating, not so simple as to become static.” Her woodcuts demonstrate the power of line, and the overflowing patterns of her compositions carry many levels of meaning. They are never static but convey action, movement, and a celebration of humanity.
- Creator:Helen West Heller (1872 - 1955, American)
- Creation Year:1952
- Dimensions:Height: 48 in (121.92 cm)Width: 39 in (99.06 cm)
- More Editions & Sizes:Unique piecePrice: $15,000
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1841214454342
Helen West Heller
Helen West Heller was born near Rushville, Illinois. From 1876 she lived in Canton, Ilinois. At a very young age, she became interested in painting. Although she received some art education at the School of Fine Arts in St. Louis and the Art Students League in New York, she was largely self-taught. As an adult she moved back and forth between Chicago and New York several times, before settling in New York for the last twenty-five years of her life. She worked in a distinctly individual style, and was intensely productive and unwaveringly committed to her artistic passions. In 1923, during a period of great poverty, she turned to the affordable materials of wood block and linoleum, often printing her results on wrapping paper. From then until the end of her life she produced more than six hundred woodcuts, and spent a great deal of time studying art and history, and writing. She was very active in artists' social and political affairs, and in 1948 was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design. She often brings figures and settings together in a mosaic of patterns that reflect both Eastern and Western block print traditions.
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