Helen Stewart

Helen Stewart (27 March 1900 – 31 March 1983) was a New Zealand artist.

Her work is held by collections in Australia and New Zealand, including at the Victoria University of Wellington, Dowse Art Museum, and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Education Stewart began studying under Linley Richardson at the Technical School in Wellington in 1921. In 1927 she had her first show and soon after left for London, where she entered the School of Art. The next year she lived in Paris and attended the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, though she said in 1982 they were both were studios where you "joined by the week". She moved to Sydney in 1930 to join her family who had moved from Wellington to live there, entering the Sydney Art School (also known as the Julian Ashton Art School). She said that she felt her real training started with Thea Proctor becoming an associate and also a teacher with her. In 1931 she entered the Grosvenor School under Iain MacNab. He was a modernist and she felt that she didn't gain much from this period of study.

She returned to Paris in 1932 and had a full year studying with Yadav Vytllayl and André Lhote's atelier.

Career Stewart was a modernist painter, influenced by European and British post-impressionist art, specifically Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and the Camden Town artists. While at studying with André Lhote she developed an appreciation for the theory of the Golden Section, the balancing of spatial and colour relationships. In 1949 she was one of the 'Group of Nine Artists' that exhibited at Helen Hitchings' Gallery in Wellington. Interior; Triangle and circle; and Portrait of a young man.

Stewart was included in Anne Kirker's New Zealand Women Artists: a Survey of 150 Years.