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Nocturne aka Saint Francis On Mount Verna 1928-1949
wood engraving, image size: 9" [h] x 10.25" [w]
Saint Francis Singing, 1928
wood engraving, image size: 8.5" [h] x 6.75" [w]"Many wood-engravers begin by drawing their design in complete detail on the block before cutting. Miss Heller prefers to sketch in the rough composition and then improvise on the wood as she goes along ... As one can see by the moving forms in Nocturne, the artist is deeply concerned with the power of suggestion in art - a power potent enough to "call spirits from the vastly deep." Conceived in abstract terms it is still lucid enough to make the meaning plain. It is indeed a compelling print, full of the awesome shapes and terrors that prowl in the depths of the subconscious; it is that fearful time of night when the powers of darkness take possession of a mind asleep...
From: American Prize Prints of the 20th Century
by Albert Reese, American Artists Group, N.Y., 1949
American Earth aka American Soil, 1935
left panel: Cotton Picking - middle: Reforestation - right: Corn Husking
In 1932, at the age of sixty, Helen West Heller returned to New York City, for the second time, where she created her most beautiful woodcuts, many for The New York Times. She was active in artists' social and political affairs, a member of the Artists Equity Association and a signer of the Call for The American Artists' Congress in 1941. She was especially active during the period of the WPA Federal Art Project creating a number of murals, the largest being a set of panels, titled Boys and Girls at Work and at Play, for a ward in the Neponsit Children's Hospital at Rockaway Park, Queens. She produced over six hundred woodcuts in the last two and a half decades of her life. Her exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum and Columbia University won her widespread recognition. Institutions such as the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, as well as many museums acquired her prints.
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In 1947, Woodcuts U.S.A., a book containing 20 of Helen West Heller's woodcuts, with quotes by American writers and a laudatory introduction by John Taylor Arms, was published in a limited signed edition by Oxford University Press, New York. A year later (1948) she became an Associate member of the National Academy of Design; to comply with a requirement associated with this honor, she created a self portrait in wood engraving (10.5"x8"), titled Seasons. During 1949, Heller's wood engraving Nocturne aka Saint Francis On Mount Verna, which was originally cut in 1929, won First Purchase Prize at the Library of Congress and was published in the American Artists Group's "American Prize Prints of the 20th Century."
SELECTED WOODCUTS: 1936-1953
During the early 1950s, Ms. Heller created a number of large color woodcuts, which according to Dr. Ernest Harms, "brought her more economic success than anything else in her not easy life." She died at Bellevue Hospital, New York City, on November 19, 1955. The Police Bureau of Missing Persons tried unsuccessfully to locate members of her family. The City Welfare Department and Artists Equity made arrangements for her funeral. She was buried at the Rosedale and Rosehill Cemetery, Linden, Union County, New Jersey.
According to Dr. Ernst Harms, who knew the artist during the last decade of her life and wrote an appreciation of her work in 1942, and an article on her life in 1957, "Helen West Heller has lived the life of a full blooded personality striving and fighting for an artistic ideal . . . Far too little is known even among artists about this amazing woman."
An exhibitition of Helen West Heller woodcuts was held at the Dana Art Gallery in Wellesley, Massachusetts, from January 13 to February 7, 2003. Curated by Scattergood-Moore, an admirer of Ms. Heller's woodcuts since the mid-1970s, the exhibit was the most significant exhibition of her art work since her death in 1955. The prints on display were drawn from three commercial galleries and two private collections. Over fifty woodcuts (executed from 1924 to 1953) plus illustrated books, a painting and copper relief by Helen West Heller were exhibited.
Installation view of the exhibit: "Helen West Heller," January 2003
NOTICE
We are interested in locating and/or purchasing woodcuts, paintings and illustrated books by Helen West Heller as well as unpublished letters, papers, diaries and photographs on this important American printmaker. Please contact Scattergood-Moore.
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Updated: October 17, 2006
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