John Heliker: The Order of Things 鈥� 60 Years of Paintings and Drawings
John Heliker: The Order of Things charts the career of a significant American artist. Heliker (1909鈥�2000) was an adept draftsman and accomplished painter who developed a highly personal and expressive approach to drawing during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) years. His early drawings and sketches are comparable to those of his contemporaries, including Ben Shahn and Philip Evergood. Heliker shared their political activism and produced many cartoons for publications like the The New Masses. During World War II and the post-war years he also earned critical acclaim for his bold experimentation with biomorphic and gestural abstraction. By the late 1950s he shifted to more representational subject matter, often depicting everyday scenes with great poignancy. As his career progressed, his palette became more muted and he adopted a nuanced, impressionistic painting style in response to Abstract Expressionism.
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John Heliker: The Order of Things charts the career of a significant American artist. Heliker (1909鈥�2000) was an adept draftsman and accomplished painter who developed a highly personal and expressive approach to drawing during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) years. His early drawings and sketches are comparable to those of his contemporaries, including Ben Shahn and Philip Evergood. Heliker shared their political activism and produced many cartoons for publications like the The New Masses. During World War II and the post-war years he also earned critical acclaim for his bold experimentation with biomorphic and gestural abstraction. By the late 1950s he shifted to more representational subject matter, often depicting everyday scenes with great poignancy. As his career progressed, his palette became more muted and he adopted a nuanced, impressionistic painting style in response to Abstract Expressionism.
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