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)
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December, 12, 2015 - February, 18, 2016 2016 Personal exhibition “The geography of light. Art and graphic of Yuriy Larin”. Moscow. Noviy Manej. April. 1 - April, 24, 2016 Museum Collections: The State Russian Museum Saint Petersburg The State Tretyakov Gallery Moscow The State Museum of Oriental Art Moscow Radischev Art Museum in Saratov Saratov Historical-Architectural and Art Museum “New Jerusalem” Istra (Moscow Region) Branch of the State Museum of People’s Art in Armenia Dilijan The Union of Art Museums and the centers of aesthetic education of the republic Udmurtiya Ijevsk Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts Volgograd Tomsk Regional Art Museum Tomsk Eastern-Kazakhstan Art Museum Semey Moscow State Museum of Vadim Sidur Moscow Andrey Sakharov Museum Moscow State Literature Museum Moscow The collection of the magazine “Nashe Nasledie” Moscow The collection of the Heinrich Boell Foundation Berlin Chronology: May, 8, 1936 Yuriy Larin was born in Moscow in a family of a prominent statesman Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin and Anna Mikhaylovna Larina; 1938–1946 years After his parents’ arrest the artist was brought up by his relatives- Boris Izrailevich and Ida Grigorievna Gusman 1946 After B.I.Gusman’s arrest was raised in an orphanage from the age of 10 near Stalingrad (Volgograd); Since the childhood the artist demonstrated his turn for arts that he inherited from his father (it’s known that N.I.Bukharin was a gifted artist-amateur). 1949 Sent to the camp. 1956 At the age of twenty when A.M.Larina returned from the Stalinist camp, learned for the first time his father’s name which was N.I.Bukharin; 1958 Graduated Novocherkassk Engineering-Melioration Institute, which he was enrolled into under the influence of his farther B.I.Gusman. 1958-60 Work as hydraulics civil engineer on the construction of Hydroelectric Power Station in Saratov and in project organizations; Underwent tuberculosis 1960 With his mother A.M.Larina got permission to come back to Moscow; Started distance education at People’s University of Arts after N.K.Krupskaya at the department of drawing and painting (professor A.S. 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Starting from this period landscapes, portraits and still-lifes are drawn from memory. Using only some pencil sketches that are done from real life. Long walks around the neighborhoods of Cheluskinskaya, trips to Abramtsevo, Klazma served as a strong impetus to the development of cycle of Moscow region landscapes. 1977 Became part of Moscow Union of Artists in USSR. “Watercolors of Y.B.Larin are the world of senciar relationships between the artist and nature. The plots of his works are extremely simple, unsophisticated, but behind all that there is a whole concept: the living nature is shaped by the eyes of the artist into one-piece space masses, human creations as ships, cranes, bridges get soft, kind forms; dissolved they become part of complete, modern and artistically convincing form” (V.A.Volkov. From the reference given to Y.Larin to become part of Moscow Union of Artists in 1975) “Yuriy Borisovich Larin appears to me as a serious and deep artist,... mature artist. His watercolors are of proof of having coloristic gift, high culture and material understanding” (M.P.Miturich. From the reference given to Y.Larin to become part of Moscow Union of Artists in 1975) 1977 Yuriy Larin directs a group of young Moscow artists in their trip to Olskiy area of Magadan region. Creates a series of landscapes of Magadan nature. 1980 In the letter to V.Strada finally justifies the theoretical part of his artistic method, later calls it the concept of limit state. The end of the 1970s - the beginning of the 1980s Devoted four years to the translation of the book of S.Cohen, professor of Princeton University, about N.I.Bukharin. Ye.A.Gnedin was helping him to translate the book, they were meeting every Thursday. Afterwards, while publishing the Russian version of the book in the USA the translators Y.LArin and Ye.Gnedin were credited under pseudonyms Ye. and Y. Chetvergovy. Yevgeniy Alexandrovich Gnedin is a prominent Soviet diplomat, staff member of M.M. Litvinov, died in 1983. Y.Larin considers him to be one of the most incredible people of the XX century. Meets famous collectionner from Moscow Ya.Ye. Rubinshtein, who buys six works of the artist (oil and watercolor); Fall, 1981–1982 Again works at the House of Creativity “Goryachiy Klyuch”. As a result the Caucasus series are enlarged with first oil works. The long contact with the nature of Caucasus influenced greatly the creative development of the artist. 1980 The artist creates the cycle of the watercolors of Moscow region in winter, the part of which will be purchased by Ya.Ye. Rubinstein and the Russian Museum; V.Volkov indicated in the works “a new approach to the light” Fall, 1981–1982 Again works at the House of Creativity “Goryachiy Klyuch”. As a result the Caucasus series are enlarged with first oil works. 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