Riva Helfond

Riva Helfond was born in Brooklyn on March 8, 1910. She spent part of her childhood in Russia returning to New York when she was eleven. She attended classes at the Art Students League, studying with Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor and Harry Sternberg.  She taught printmaking at the Madison Square Boys club under the College Arts Association.  Her circle of friends include William DeKooning, Arshile Gorke, Franz Kline and Harold Rosenberg.  Helfond produced a large group of lithographs, woodcuts and serigraphs as well as paintings and drawings.  Her work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and the Brooklyn Museum; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Boston Public Library; the Newark Museum and Newark Public Library, New Jersey; the Cincinnati Art Museum; the University of Kentucky Art Museum; the Center for the Arts and the Wolfsonian Foundation, Miami; the Los Angeles County Museum; the National Museum of American Art and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and the British Museum, London.