The Rensselaer County Historical Society (RCHS) in historic downtown Troy debuts a new exhibit on Rudy Helmo, Rensselaer County’s Expressionist Artist on Friday, May 29 as part of Troy Night Out, from 5 to 8 pm. The exhibit runs through August 28.
RCHS is open Thursdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 pm. There is no fee, donations are encouraged. Guided tours of the exhibit are available for groups. For more information, call 518-272-7232 or visit www.rchsonline.org.
Helmo Enlivened Local Art Scene In 1950s And 60s
Photo courtesy of RCHS.
RCHS presents an exhibit of paintings by Rudy Helmo (1908-1986) as a companion to the current main gallery exhibit, Scenic Overlook: Perspectives on Rensselaer County’s Changing Landscape. This new exhibit brings together Helmo’s work for the first time in over two decades and includes landscape, still-life and unfinished paintings from the RCHS collection and on loan from private lenders.
RCHS Curator Stacy Pomeroy Draper states, “Rudy Helmo’s landscapes are a wonderful addition to the Scenic Overlook exhibit, adding a mid-20th Century component to the show. In addition, this new exhibit highlights a more recent artist who had a major impact on art in the Capital Region in the 20th Century.”
After moving from his native Bavaria in 1929, Helmo studied for four years at the Art Students League of New York. Moving to the Capital District in 1944, he was soon well-known as an art teacher and an artist, particularly for his landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, focusing on Rensselaer County and New England coastal scenes. He taught, painted, exhibited, and sold art from 1950 through 1970. He showed widely, enjoyed regional acclaim, and influenced generations of students with his down-to-earth style of teaching. During these years, Helmo offered a full week of morning and evening classes at various schools, clubs, museums, the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Rensselaer County Council for the Arts, art associations, YWCA’s, the State University of New York at Albany (where he had gained a faculty appointment), and at his farmhouse studio.
Gallery Talk
The artist’s daughter, Joan Helmo Bondy, will be giving an informal gallery talk on Friday, May 29, for the opening of the exhibit, and on Saturday, May 30, at 2 pm.
About The Artist
A noted painter and art teacher of upstate New York, Rudolf (Rudy) Helmo was born on April 15, 1908, the tenth and last child of Ludwig and Rosa, in Thurmansbang, Bavaria, Germany.
Rudy started painting as a teenager. After graduating from secondary school, he apprenticed with a haberdasher in Passau as a display and window dresser. Rudy joined his older brothers for a better life in the U.S. in New York City in 1929. He found a niche in the restaurant business, working as a dishwasher and floor-mopper, busboy and, finally, a waiter in fine establishments.
Rudy remained dedicated to painting and, while still working long shifts in restaurants, studied at the Art Students League of New York. There, he studied under noted teacher/artists Robert Brackman and George Bridgeman.
Exhausted by the pace of life in NYC, Rudy and his wife Hanna Rossgotterer moved upstate to slower-paced Troy in 1944 and had a daughter, Joan. Rudy painted in a third floor garret above their apartment or outdoors during the day, and worked at restaurants in the evening. After a few years, he was accomplished enough to exhibit, win prizes and publicity, and start teaching classes in painting.
In 1950, the couple bought a farmhouse in Pittstown, and Rudy turned a wing into a studio. There was finally ample room to paint, hold classes and exhibit, as well as garden, cook and entertain, raise a family, keep farm animals, and enjoy the scenic countryside, which was similar to his native Bavarian woods.
Rudy exhibited in Utica, NY at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., and the Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, among many other venues.
His painting style is academic but appealing and accessible; reviewers compared his color and brushwork to Cezanne and the Impressionists. Famously outgoing, he held entertaining demonstrations at art gatherings in which he would complete an oil still life painting in under an hour with instructional and witty commentary, and, amid applause, auction off the still-wet canvas.
Helmo died on July 1, 1986, in Watervliet from Alzheimer’s Disease; Hanna had cared for him at home. She passed away in 2002.
Rudy’s work was exhibited in 1993 at a group exhibit at Russell Sage College called “Forty Years Later” including other Upper Hudson artists who were his contemporaries. Articles from the Albany Times Union and Troy Record from the 1950s and ‘60s depict a flowering of cultural awareness and art appreciation during that era in the Upper Hudson region, and his contributions to that era. In 1986, a show at the University Art Gallery, Albany, included one of his portraits.
Among Rudy’s prizes: a purchase prize by the 25th Regional Exhibition by Artists of the Upper Hudson, 1960; first prize in academic oil painting, Albany Artists Group, 1961; purchase prize of the Art Festival, Utica; first and second prizes, Empire Market Show; Bruce W. Sanborn Award for Portraiture, the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Mass.; and first prize, Art Fair of 1957, Albany, NY.
He was a life member of the Art Students League. He had 30 one-man shows and was included in many group shows in NYC and across the country. His work is in many private collections.