Helen M. Seegert

1907-1975

Theme/Style – Modernism, figurative art, animal figures, still life

Media – Woodblock prints, bronze and cement sculpture, watercolors, murals

Artistic Focus – Helen Seegert was a skilled sculptor and printmaker, and by all accounts a fiercely independent woman and an enthusiastic member of the circle of artists working in the Santa Barbara area in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Her color woodblock prints are especially notable for their elegant composition and deep, jewel-like colors.

Career Highlights –

• Born Helena Maye Gould in 1907 in Carpinteria near Santa Barbara, California, Helen Seegert grew up in that area and in 1926 enrolled at the Santa Barbara State Teachers College, which later became the University of California at Santa Barbara. It was there that she met Frederick A. Seegert, a fellow artist and sculptor, whom she married in 1927 while they were both still students. Thereafter she was known as Helen (and sometimes Helena) M. Seegert.
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The couple continued their studies at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts under Archibald Dawson, Amory C. Simons, and Frank Morley Fletcher; and eventually Seegert joined her husband as an instructor at the school, which closed in 1933. Also in 1933, Seegert attended a summer course at Mills College in Oakland, CA; and she continued to teach art locally and for brief periods in Pasadena and Los Angeles.

Seegert exhibited at the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery (later the San Diego Museum of Art) in 1933; and at the Santa Barbara Summer artists’ fair in 1935, where she also modeled visitors’ portraits in clay; and the Southern California Festival of Allied Arts in 1936.

Seegert was included in San Diego’s California Pacific International Exposition in 1935; and in the Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, in 1939.

A lifelong resident of the Santa Barbara area, Seegert was a member of the city’s Arts and Crafts League, and the Santa Barbara Associates, a group of artists who exhibited in the art gallery at the city’s Chamber of Commerce during the 1930s. The members’ work traveled throughout various locations in Southern California.

Seegert’s husband, Frederick, became the principal bronze caster for her sculptural works and the works of other sculptors in the Santa Barbara area; but their marriage ended in divorce in 1937.

During the Depression, Seegert sought work with the WPA’s Federal Art Project and under their auspices produced a concrete fountain at the La Purisima Mission and a painted cement mural entitled Building the Mission at the newly-built Veterans Memorial Building (1937), both in Lompoc, California.

In 1958 Seegert married William J. Jansen, and spent eight years as an illustrator for Point Mugu Naval Air Station in Ventura County.

Helen Seegert Jansen passed away in 1975 in Carpinteria, California.

 

Selection of Works by this Artist


Al Anocheser

Bibliographic references are available upon request.