Helen Louise Beccard Niles

Helen Louise Beccard was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1903. She received her art training at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts of Washington University from 1921 to 1924. For the next 15 years, Beccard taught painting and drawing at the Mary Institute, a prestigious prep school established by the founders of Washington University. During this time she was a socially conscious realist and exhibited widely in museums and galleries in the Midwest and the East.

She became a member of the American Artists Congress, spent time in Mexico studying mural and fresco painting, taught at the St. Genevieve Artists' Colony with Thomas Hart Benton, Joe Jones and other noted regionalists, was a member of the St. Louis Artists Guild, and in 1939 her oil Sleep was accepted into the New York World's Fair.

In the early 1940s Beccard taught art in New York City, and in 1948 she moved to Washington, D.C., becoming a member of the Society of Washington Artists. One of her works was awarded a purchase prize from the Baltimore Museum of Art in the mid-fifties.

After moving to California in 1956 her work became less figurative, and the use of abstract and geometrical forms began to play an increasingly important role. She also went on to conduct a lithography workshop at the Palo Alto Art Center. Right up until her death in 1994, Beccard remained very active, winning numerous prizes and awards from the San Francisco Society of Woman Artists.

Source: Aaron Galleries, Glenview, IL