Hélène de Beauvoir

The French painter Hélène de Beauvoir (1910–2001), Simone de Beauvoir’s younger sister, developed a practice combining painting and printmaking. After completing the baccalauréat, she studied printmaking, among other subjects, at a technical school and painting at several academies in Montparnasse. Her first exhibition took place in 1936 at the Galerie Bonjean in Paris.

During her stay in Portugal, she worked on her technique; according to the source, her body of work then comprised around a hundred paintings. In parallel, she continued to practise engraving with the burin regularly, a technique that the source associates with a need for rigour, and exhibited a series devoted to the «mondines» in Milan in 1957. Her prints also found their way into books: engravings by Hélène de Beauvoir illustrate Simone de Beauvoir’s La Femme rompue, published by Gallimard in 1968.

After the events of May 1968, she produced, over the course of a few months, a series of more than thirty paintings devoted to the youth that had shaken France. Entitled «Joli mois de mai», the series was eventually exhibited at the Moulin Rouge. Her commitment was also expressed through her activism: she chaired SOS Femmes Alsace for two years, then continued to denounce the oppression of women in her paintings. From the 1970s onwards, she exhibited in several cities, including Tokyo, Brussels, Lausanne, Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, Boston and Mexico City. The Word Nasse Gallery in New York also organised a retrospective of her feminist and ecological works.

Works recorded at auction

Dobiaschofsky

"The waterfall".

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

"La cascade".
Öl auf Leinwand

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

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