Helen Greene Blumenschein (1909-1989)

Helen Greene Blumenschein became a painter of Southwest landscapes, an illustrator, lithographer, and amateur archaeologist. She was the daughter of Ernest Blumenschein (1874-1960), a member of the first generation of Taos artists, and his artist wife, Mary Blumenschein (1869-1958).

Helen grew up in both New York City and Taos, moving to the New Mexico town at age ten with her parents in 1919. She had an interest in art from the time she was a youngster and pursuing that focus, she graduated from the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn. Then in 1929, she traveled in Europe with her mother and studied with Andre Lhote. Returning to Taos, she focused on lithography and silk screening, and took lessons in those subjects at the Art Students League part of each year from 1932 to 1934.

From that time, she traveled extensively, but ever returned to Taos. During World War II, she was in the Women's Army Corps in the South Pacific.

In addition to Southwest landscapes, her paintings have a wide range of subjects including scenes of Europe and New York as well as landscapes of Arizona and the Grand Tetons. She worked in a variety of mediums: oil, watercolor, ink, silk screen, lithography, and charcoal.

She exhibited extensively, and venues included the National Academy of Design, Carnegie Institute, Paris Salon, New York World's Fair, and Venice, Italy. She had a three-person exhibition with her parents at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff in 1979.

Blumenschein was also very active with the Taos Historical Society and the New Mexico Archaeological Society and wrote articles, which were published, on those subjects.

According to M. Doudoroff, who knew the artist personally, Blumenschein was a skilled hunter, and in the 1950s transported the deer, elk and occasional bear she bagged from the mountains into town on top of a splendid 1930s vintage Packard hearse, to the amusement of locals and amazement of tourists. As sponsor of the Taos Sportsmen's Rifle and Pistol Club, Junior Division, she taught many the proper handling of firearms, and drove us to target shooting matches around the state in the same hearse. After her father's death she maintained their house in Taos as a museum. This house, a very good example of early, simple adobe construction, is close to the Harwood Foundation, two blocks southwest of the plaza. (Doudoroff)

Source- Askart.com:

- Phil and Marion Kovinick, "Women Artists of the American West"

- Peggy and Harold Samuels, "Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West"

- M. Doudoroff, acquaintance of the artist