This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Helen was born in 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of John F. Beccard, Jr., a St. Louis police officer, and Lena M. Obermark, his wife. Although the family name sounds French, both of her parents are of German descent. She was the eldest of three children. Helen attended Yeatman High School, St. Louis, and is mentioned in that school's 1926 yearbook as a successful former student who, at the time, was working at Mary Institute and preparing illustrations for a childrens' book being written by a friend of hers. In April, 1930 she lived with her parents at 3024 Walton St., St. Louis, and was still working as a teacher of painting and drawing at Mary Institute.
Information provided by Andy Beck, family historian, a distant cousin of the artist
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Biography from Aaron Galleries:
| Helen Louise Beccard was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1903. She received her art training at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts of Washington University from 1921 to 1924. For the next 15 years, Beccard taught painting and drawing at the Mary Institute, a prestigious prep school established by the founders of Washington University. During this time she was a socially conscious realist and exhibited widely in museums and galleries in the Midwest and the East.
She became a member of the American Artists Congress, spent time in Mexico studying mural and fresco painting, taught at the St. Genevieve Artists' Colony with Thomas Hart Benton, Joe Jones and other noted regionalists, was a member of the St. Louis Artists Guild, and in 1939 her oil Sleep was accepted into the New York World's Fair.
In the early 1940s Beccard taught art in New York City, and in 1948 she moved to Washington, D.C., becoming a member of the Society of Washington Artists. One of her works was awarded a purchase prize from the Baltimore Museum of Art in the mid-fifties.
After moving to California in 1956 her work became less figurative, and the use of abstract and geometrical forms began to play an increasingly important role. She also went on to conduct a lithography workshop at the Palo Alto Art Center. Right up until her death in 1994, Beccard remained very active, winning numerous prizes and awards from the San Francisco Society of Woman Artists. |
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