The Brooklyn Rail

Hélène de Beauvoir, with that beautiful face so like and unlike her sister Simone, was a fantastically gifted and venturesome painter. For the first time ever in the UK, this wonderful artist is having a solo exhibition now at Amar Gallery in London.

Amar Gallery founder Amar Singh says:

I discovered Hélène de Beauvoir as I came across her name while researching 1930s and ’40s Parisian art. I wondered whether Hélène was related to Simone and when I discovered they were sisters, I was astonished. This incredible story of stunning art, family, and equal rights unfolded. … I travelled mostly across Europe to meet collectors I found who owned works. Over three years and several trips to Italy, Germany, and France I managed to gather enough works to stage the exhibition Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed. 

Amar Gallery champions overlooked artists which almost always are women, LGBT+, or artists of color, because these are the artistic voices which need to be heard and seen after centuries of suppression. We have contributed to the markets of over a dozen overlooked artists and were the first London gallery in decades to exhibit the work of artists such as Lynne Drexler, Yvonne Thomas, and Ethel Schwabacher, whose works now sell for six or seven figures.

Hélène de Beauvoir’s various images depict many of the places she visited with her diplomat husband, Lionel de Roulet. When I was browsing among them, a few instantly seized me, starting with the negative smashing of the mirror. Given how little known she was compared with Simone, this image stood out bravely for me.

Some were straightforward and athletic, like the horse and rider! Or the ski image: you could feel her right there, accomplishing the action. Those that really most appealed to me were the multicolored balls, beautiful like bubbles, and, on a different plane and subject altogether, the garden-like plots, and also the village scenes. If I were to venture an adjective to describe her paintings in their so widespread subjects, I might chance upon the word diverse, in all its glorious spread.

Something about each one speaks, some louder than others, some more muffled, some more distinct. I have to confess, in all honesty and forthrightness, that I genuinely love her work—right up there with the painters I most value, men and women. As we would say, in my long ago South, she really takes the cake. Here let me salute her, wholeheartedly.