“Untitled Abstract”

Original abstract geometric oil on paper painting by the well known American artist Helen Gerardia. Signed middle bottom. Circa 1955. Condition is very good. Under glass. The artwork is housed in a thin solid maple wood frame in a light orange finish. Overall framed measurements are 31 by 25 inches. Provenance: A Brooklyn, New York estate.

BIOGRAPHY
Helen Gerardia is an artist best known as a geometric abstract hard-edge painter.
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Helen Gerardia was born in Dnipro, Ukraine in 1903. At the time of her birth, Ukraine was under the domination of Imperial Russia and the city was known as Ekaterinoslav. She immigrated to the United Sates in 1921.

Having settled in New York, Gerardia became an elementary school teacher. In the late 1940s, she studied at the Art Students League. Gerardia immersed herself in the movement of Abstract Expressionism, studying under Hans Hofmann at his New York school. She also studied at the Brooklyn Museum School and the Art Students League.

In the early 1950s, Gerardia was primarily a painter and leaned more towards the Cubism and Geometric Abstraction. Gerardia used hard-edge geometric shapes in much of her works as well as the colors black and white. She started incorporating more color into her paintings starting in 1959, including lavender, which renders heavily into her works of the early 1960s. “I have always been interested in the play of light and its effect on form and color” stated Gerardia. “Another Quality of light, the prismatic breaking up of colors, has always fascinated me. I felt that by placing my color in broken areas I could, in a way, approximate the movement of atmosphere and the divisibility of color.”

During her career, she engaged in lithography and etching. She eventually founded the Gerardia Workshop, where she taught a variety of mediums. Gerardia was an original member of the Vectors artist group and a delegate to the U.S. Committee of the International Association of Art. From 1967 until 1969, she was president of the American Society of Contemporary Artists.

Gerardia died in New York in 1988.