Spokane Art Center | Instructors | Vanessa Helder (Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper)

Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper

Spokane Art Center : Instructors : Vanessa Helder

Name: Vanessa Helder

Born: 1904

Died: 1968

Nationality: American

Affiliations: 20th Century, Northwest Artist, Spokane Art Center Instructor, and WPA Artist

Zama Vanessa Helder was born in Lynden, Washington and lived in Seattle and Spokane until relocating permanently to Los Angeles in 1943. She studied at the University of Washington and later at the Art Students League in New York with Frank Vincent DuMond, George Picken, and Robert Brackman. Helder first gained national attention in 1936 when her work was accepted in the American Watercolor Society's exhibition in New York. Maynard Walker discovered her work and began representing her at his prestigious New York gallery. An important accomplishment for Helder was inclusion in the "Realists and Magic Realists" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1943, a show that included artist Edward Hopper. She also exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum where she had a one-person exhibition in 1939. Vanessa Helder was a member of Women Painters of Washington, the National Association of Women Artists, and the American and California Watercolor Societies. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, the Newark Museum, the High Museum of Art, The Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, The Academy Of Arts And Letters, New York, the Museum of Art, Washington State University, Pullman, and the I.B.M. Corporation. The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture owns her complete series of the Grand Coulee Dam construction. Sources: Manuscript collections, Joel E. Ferris Research Library and Archives, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture; Collection records, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane; David Martin, An Enduring Legacy: Women Painters of Washington, 1930-2005, Whatcom Museum of History & Art, Bellingham, Washington, 2005.