John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal, 1932-1948

Opening Reception - Thursday, January 26, 5-7 p.m.

John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal marks the rediscovery of a remarkable and largely unknown body of work by an eminent American artist.  An ex­traordinarily accomplished draftsman, John Heliker (1909-2000) developed a highly personal and ex­pressive approach to drawing during the WPA years.  His early drawings and sketches are comparable to those of his Social Realist contemporaries Ben Shahn (1898-1969) and Philip Evergood (1901-73). Heliker shared in their political activism, and he produced many potently anti-fascist cartoons for the leftist publication The New Masses (c. 1937—1941), some of which are represented here.  During the Second World War and the immediate Postwar years, Heliker earned critical acclaim for his bold experimentations with biomorphic and architectonic abstraction.  By the late 1950s his drawing style became more muted, and he achieved a tonalist manner of great poignan­cy. In the late 1950s and subsequent decades, he developed a nuanced, impressionistic painting style in response to abstract expressionism—an approach that was to character­ize his mature style, and it is for this latter work that Heliker is now best known.

John Heliker was active in the New York art scene from the 1940s onward.  From the beginning, his art won the respect of his peers and critics alike.  He earned numerous professional honors, including the Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim fellowship, three Ford Foundation purchase prizes, election to both the National Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.  Heliker earned the rare privilege of a full scale retrospective at the Whit­ney Museum of American Art (1968) and was awarded two honorary doctorate of fine art degrees (Colby College, 1966; Bard College, 1991).  Heliker’s art is represented in the collec­tions of nearly 80 institutions across the country.  He is also the subject of a short documentary film:  John Heliker—The Inner Compass of Certainty (produced by the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation in 1998).

Heliker was closely connected with such abstract expressionists as Philip Guston (1913-80), who became a life-long friend.  A highly influential teacher, Heliker helped many aspiring artists during his years as a member of the Columbia University art faculty (1947-74) and later at the Art Students League of New York (1975-78).  He was a founding faculty member of the well-known New York Stu­dio School in 1965 (with fellow artists Philip Guston, Leland Bell, Charles Cajori, and Mercedes Matter).  John Heliker was also associated with important composers:  Carl Ruggles, John Cage, and Lou Harrison, and he created mask and possibly set designs for choreographer Merce Cunningham, another close friend.

Spanning a period from the years 1932-1948, a time in which John Heliker created powerfully expressive figure drawings, cubist-inspired landscapes, and biomorphic abstractions in diverse media, this exhibition brings attention to a remarkable aspect of his art that re­mains largely obscure. Most of the fourty-four original drawings, and two of the three sketchbooks in this exhibition belong to the Heliker-LaHotan Founda­tion, which holds the artist’s estate.

This exhibition was curated by David A. Lewis, Professor of Art History, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas, and made possible by the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation in association with Stephen F. Austin State University.