Helen Heller

Artist Details

• First Name Helen
• Maiden Name Barnhart
• Alternate Name(s) Helen West Helen West Heller Helen Barnhart
• Surname Heller
• Spouse’s Full Name Roger Heller (1888-1975); inventor
• Previous Spouse(s) Herbert Warren West; farmer
• Names and Birth Years of Children n/a
• Birth Date 1872
• Birth Place Rushville, Illinois
• Death Date November 19, 1955
• Death Place New York, New York
• Residence(s) 1892-?: left her abusive husband and went to Chicago, Illinois
  
  1902-?: New York, New York
  
  1921-1931: Lincoln Park West, Chicago, Illinois
  
  1932-?: New York, New York
  
  Canton, Illinois
• Active In Chicago, Illinois
  
  New York, New York
  
  Rushville, Illinois
• Studio Location(s) 1921-1931: Lincoln Park West, Chicago, Illinois
• Categories Block Printer, Graphic Artist, Illustrator, Linoleum Cut, Lithographer, Mixed Media, Mosaic artist, Painter-Oil, Printmaker, Watercolorist
• Training 1902-?: Art Student League, New York, New York
  Ferrer Center Modern School; student of Robert Henri and George Bellows
  St. Louis School of Fine Arts, St. Louis, Missouri
  
• Subject(s) of Art Array
• Exhibitions History circa 1920s: Neo-Arlimuso Society, Chicago, Illinois
  
  Walden Bookshop, Chicago, Illinois [solo; organized by Luneta Cooper]
  
  October 1922: No-Jury Society of Artists, Marshall Field & Co. galleries, Chicago, Illinois
  
  1922: Madison Art Association, Madison, Wisconsin
  
  1923, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
  
  1929-1932: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
  
  1930s: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
  
  1931: Vienna, Austria; watercolors
  
  1934 or 1935: Salon d'Automne, Paris, France
  
  December 1934-January 1935: gallery operated by Robert Ulrich Godsoe, New York, New York
  
  1936: American Artists Congress, New York, New York,
  
  1942-1946: National Academy of Design, New York, New York
  
  1942: Artists' Gallery, New York, New York
  
  1943, 1944, 1945: Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
  
  1948: Smithsonian Institution, department of graphic art, Washington, D.C. [solo]
• Collections :  Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
  
  Bethany College
  
  Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois
  
  Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California
  
  Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
  
  Library of Congress
  
  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
  
  Museum of the National Academy of Design, New York, New York
  
  National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  
  National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.
  
  New York Public Library, New York, New York
  
  Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, Kansas
  
  Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
• Publications Bulliet, C. J. “Artists of Chicago, Past and Present, No. 16: Helen West Heller.” Chicago Daily News, June 8, 1935. Heller, Helen West. Woodcuts U.S.A. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. Harms, Ernest. “Dark to Light: An Appreciation of the Life Work of Helen West Heller, 1872–1955.” American Artist 21, no. 9 (November 1957), 30–34, 67–68. Harms, Ernst. “Helen West Heller—The Woodcutter.” Print Collector’s Quarterly, 29, no. 2 (April 1942), 251–71. Stanfel, Larry. The Complete Poetry of Helen West Heller: With Illustrations Selected from Her Art. ------. Uncompromising Souls: The Lives and Work of Artist Helen West Heller and Husband Roger.
• Memberships Chicago No-Jury Society; founding member
  
  1936: American Artists Congress, New York, New York
  
  1948: named an associate of the National Academy of Design
• Awards 1944, 1949: awards for prints, Library of Congress
• Other Occupation(s) 1892-?: model for artists
  
  1892-?: menial jobs
  
  wrote poetry; caught attention of artist Jean Heap; published in several journals and in the weekly Art Magazine of the Chicago Evening Post, from 1926 to 1928, under the name of “Tanka.”
  
  1902-?: factory work
  
  1930s: WPA artist: paintings, prints, murals
• Website(s) page on Bernard Friedman Collection website
  
  page on Scattergood-Moore Collection website
  
  essay by Cori Sherman North, The Art of a Prairie Child: Helen West Heller, 1872-1955
  
  page on Wikipedia
  
  C.J. Bulliet June 8, 1935 Chicago Daily News article transcribed on Illinois Historical Art Project website
  
   
• Biography Father:  John Barnhart, wagon maker, boat builder, decoy maker, farmer; Helen's most prized possession, a fire in 1934, was a black walnut bookcase he made
  
  Name of the "No-Jury" Society of Chicago artists was her idea.
  
  While deeply spiritual in her artwork, Heller was also a committed Marxist who attended the First American Artists’ Congress Against War and Fascism in 1936.
  
  Leading an Artists Union protest against WPA job layoffs in December 1936, Heller was beaten unconscious by police and arrested with more than 200 of her fellow sit-down strikers.