Helen Stewart

Name
Helen Stewart
Date of birth
27 Mar 1900
Place of birth
Wellington (region)/New Zealand
Date of death
31 Mar 1983
Place of death
Wellington (region)/New Zealand
Biography
Helen Stewart was a trailblazing New Zealand artist and member of a vanguard group of women at the forefront of modern art in Sydney during the 1930s, including Grace Cossington-Smith, Enid Cambridge, and Treania Smith. Born in Wellington in 1900, Stewart lived in Sydney from 1928 to 1946 and travelled extensively, training in Paris at the Académie Colarossi, Académie de la Grande Chaumière and André Lhote's atelier, and the Sydney Art School. Active in numerous contemporary art groups during this period, she exhibited widely, most notably at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney where her paintings were praised for their freshness and for Stewart’s vibrant portrayal of fashionable young women. Working across portraiture, landscape painting, and still life, Stewart employed a range of modernist techniques with facility and vigour but faced a cool reception on her return home to New Zealand in 1946. Her work was declined for exhibition by the conservative New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington, which caused Stewart to find alternative venues to show her work. In 1949 the progressive ‘Group of Nine’ was formed in Wellington, comprising such like-minded artists as Barc, Jenny Campbell, Gwen Knight, and Evelyn Page, and provided a haven for Stewart’s more experimental approach. Today, her works are celebrated for their sophisticated sense of design, robust treatment of form, and audacious colour combinations.