Helen West Heller

American painter, printmaker, and illustrator, 1872–1955

BiographyAn American painter, printmaker, poet, and illustrator, she was born Helen Barnhart in Rushville, IL. In 1892, she moved to Chicago to support herself as a model while training in art. A decade later she moved to New York City, taking on factory work and embroidery to pay for lessons at the Art Students League and the Ferrer Center Modern School, where she studied with Robert Henri and George Bellows. Back in Chicago in the 1920s, she became a founding member of the No-Jury Society and started making woodcuts and, with encouragement from Jane Heap, publishing poems under the name "Tanka." In the 1930s, she returned to New York and produced paintings and prints with support from the WPA. She became a Marxist and attended the First American Artists' Congress Against War and Fascism. Heller helped lead the Artists Union protest of layoffs by the WPA.

An accomplished printmaker, Heller was named an associate member of the National Academy of Design, and her prints were awarded by the Library of Congress. Her work is in the collections of many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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