Fox Trot

Biography of Hélène Riedel ( 1901-1991, Czech )

Although born in 1901 in Troppau, then Czechoslovakia, Hélène Riedel would spend most of her life in Belgium. In 1924 she commenced her studies at the Vienna Academy, taking classes in painting and decoration. By 1926 she was settled in Brussels and painting the cubist inspired pieces that are typical of the Art Deco movement. These colorful, lively works often incorporated a collage element. In 1939 she enrolled at the Academy of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean to learn engraving and from that point her style changed. Gone were the vibrant figural scenes of the Brussels café society and in their place watercolors of forest and landscape subjects She associated with the painter Anne-Pierre de Kat during this period whose influence is evident, but these later paintings rarely reached the artistic heights of her earlier oeuvre.

Hélène Riedel would continue to exhibit her work until she passed in 1991. In 2001, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her death, an important retrospective totaling nearly 250 works was held in Koekelberg, Brussels. Her work today is held in many private collections and publicly at the museums of Brussels  (Cabinet des Estampes) and in Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum van de Schone Kunsten).

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