Helen Phillips Prints for Sale

The sculptor and print maker Helen Elizabeth Hayter Phillips was born in San Francisco. She studied at the School of Fine Art in San Francisco and won a travel scholarship to study art in Paris in 1936, where she fell in love with the ideals and practices of the surrealist movement. Helen Phillips also fell in love with the artist Stanley William Hayter, director of the Atelier 17, a print studio which served as an important center of experimentation for many surrealist artists. In the 1940s and 1950s, Phillips created anthropomorphic forms in bronze, as well as beautiful engravings. They had two sons together but the marriage dissolved in 1971. Until the mid-1960s Helen Phillips enjoyed a growing international reputation, but in 1967 disaster struck, when she severely injured her back moving a heavy sculpture. She was incapacitated for eight years at a crucial stage of her career, which never recovered. When she finally got back to work, the talent and determination were still there, but somehow the creative impetus could not be regained. The photo above shows Phillips and Hayter in their studio. Helen Phillips Obituary in The Independent