Riva Helfond

WPA Woman Artist Modernist Abstract Print

1965

Title: Guide 32 color screenprint on 100% rag handmade, shaped deckle edged paper. with applied glitter. hand signed in pencil, stamped and numbered from edition of 33. Sandy Kinnee...

Title: Non Scientific Time 32 color screenprint on 100% rag handmade, shaped deckle edged paper. hand signed in pencil, stamped and numbered. Sandy Kinnee is known for paper making...

Riva Helfond (1910–2002) was an American artist and printmaker best known for her social realist studies of working people's lives. Riva Helfond was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family. She spent some of her childhood in Russia and returned to New York at the age of eleven, living in New York or New Jersey for most of the rest of her life. Between 1928 and 1940, she studied at the School of Industrial Art and the Art Students League; her teachers included William von Schlegell, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Morris Kantor for painting and Harry Sternberg for printmaking. Among her fellow students were Alexander Brook and her future husband, the sculptor William (Bill) Barrett. Helfond began teaching in the College Art Association Program (1933–36) and then taught printmaking at the Harlem Arts Community Center (1936–38). Initially she taught lithography alongside Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and others before moving to the graphic arts division, where she worked with Louis Lozowick and Jacob Kainen, and the silkscreen division, which was supervised by Anthony Velonis and which had Harry Gottlieb and Elizabeth Olds as founding members. Among her students at the Center was Robert Blackburn, who would go on to found New York's Printmaking Workshop in the 1940s. Later on, Helfond taught printmaking at New York University (1964), and she was on the faculty of Union College in Cranford, New Jersey, from 1980 onwards. From 1936 to 1941, Helfond was an artist in the New York Works Progress Administration program's graphics division, creating work in a variety of media, including lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, aquatints, collograph, and silkscreens. Some of her work shows the impact that color had as it entered American printmaking during this period, and she was adventurous in exploring the possibilities opened up by screen printing. She printed...

Color lithograph with color paper collage, 1987. Pencil signed lower right and dated, and numbered lower left 5/24. Litho depicts a poem titled "Ariadne" by T. Weiss. Published by ...

There is a natural and raw understanding in Mukesh Sharma’s prints that both depict, and are influenced by, the Rajastani communities of his home town in rural India. In these Limited Edition fine-art prints, made over a period of twenty years, we are offered the colours of India’s ancient land, the textures, light and the patterns that are everywhere. In the patterns of the arable fields to the jali's (carved screens) in the architecture. This work is however not romantic nor nostalgic but shows a deeper rooted need to offer a visual heritage of place, of where the artist is from and the journey that he is taking. The results are both compelling and honest. Mukesh Sharma, Twin Showcase, Lino-cut on German Ivory paper Edition: AP, 2005 Image size: 47 x 39 cm / Sheet size: 79 x 55 cm Unframed 'We belong where love finds us' Mukesh Sharma's work: It is often in childhood that paths are set for what we will become. Mukesh Sharma hails from a rural, agricultural village in Rajasthan, India. His Father is a craftsman who fixed and mended farm machinery and understood the working parts in the processes. Sharma followed in his Father’s footsteps, as is often the case in Indian families, but his was not the machines of the fields but the presses of the printing studio. Like his Father, Mukesh Sharma is fascinated with understanding how things work and how he can manipulate the metal in his hands. It is not surprising then that his medium of choice is printing. One of the most physically challenging of all the practices, it can often be physically challenging as well as technical and detailed. In his youth, Sharma would draw with stones on walls and floors. He was lucky his family encouraged this and he is grateful for his early art-training at the Jaipur School of Art but it was at the Baroda Art Department that he was introduced to the great printing traditions of Jyoti Bhatt...

There is a natural and raw understanding in Mukesh Sharma’s prints that both depict, and are influenced by, the Rajastani communities of his home town in rural India. In these Limited Edition fine-art prints, made over a period of twenty years, we are offered the colours of India’s ancient land, the textures, light and the patterns that are everywhere. In the patterns of the arable fields to the jali's (carved screens) in the architecture. This work is however not romantic nor nostalgic but shows a deeper rooted need to offer a visual heritage of place, of where the artist is from and the journey that he is taking. The results are both compelling and honest. Mukesh Sharma, Jetty 1, Lino-cut chin- coll’e on German Ivory paper Edition: 3 of 5, 2005 Image size: 50 x 33 cm / Sheet size: 79 x 55 cm Unframed ''What mesmerised me was the meeting of the sea and the mountain peak. Where the Jetty, a special curved wooden staircase leading to one end and the deep crystal clear sea at a distance. These scenes were amazing to me." Mukesh Sharma's work: It is often in childhood that paths are set for what we will become. Mukesh Sharma hails from a rural, agricultural village in Rajasthan, India. His Father is a craftsman who fixed and mended farm machinery and understood the working parts in the processes. Sharma followed in his Father’s footsteps, as is often the case in Indian families, but his was not the machines of the fields but the presses of the printing studio. Like his Father, Mukesh Sharma is fascinated with understanding how things work and how he can manipulate the metal in his hands. It is not surprising then that his medium of choice is printing. One of the most physically challenging of all the practices, it can often be physically challenging as well as technical and detailed. In his youth, Sharma would draw with stones on walls and floors. He was lucky his family encouraged this and he is grateful for his early art-training at the Jaipur School of Art but it was at the Baroda Art Department that he was introduced to the great printing traditions of Jyoti Bhatt...

Vintage abstract figural "Embrace", a lithograph by Patricia Ann Way (American, 20th Century). Signed "Patricia Way" and dated "76" lower right. Slight crease to lower center and s...

Captivating lithograph of Fingerprint scan with facial elements by artist Joe Testa-Secca (American, b. 1945), C. 1990. #155/175. Signed lower right. Presented in metal frame and mat...