Robert Helman

There is something of Soulages, of Hartung, and of Soutine in his work, if such close quarters could be imagined between the three. Robert Helman (1910-1990) is among those artists from the middle of the XXth century, whose fame never went beyond the close circles but who carried out a very demanding work, far from changing fashions. His Forests, his landscapes of an imagined Genesis escape figurative art and are heavy with black and somber colors in think coats of paint. In this illustrated monography, the author replaces Helman in his network of relations, which was rather wide: he was a friend of Bénézit, of Mané-Katz and of Maurice Nadeau, as well as of Oscar Domínguez and as a matter of fact set up in the workshop where the latter hung himself on 31 December 1957… Born in Rumania, living in France but a great traveller, Helman perfectly illustrates the open and cosmopolitan dimension of the School of Paris.

• Robert Helman by Lydia Harambourg, Somogy art publishing house, 2007, ISBN : 978-2-7572-0075-9, 192 p., 35 €