ZAMA VANESSA HELDER (1904-1968)

Zama Vanessa Helder was born in Lynden, Washington and lived in Seattle and Spokane before moving to Los Angeles in 1943. Vanessa studied at the University of Washington and the Art Students League, NY. In 1939, Helder was on staff at the Spokane WPA Art Center where she taught watercolor painting and lithography. During that time, she produced her famous series of watercolors documenting the Grand Coulee Dam construction.

Zama Vanessa Helder began exhibiting nationally in 1936 and was represented by the Maynard Walker Gallery in New York. Zama exhibited several of her paintings in the 1943 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, "Realists & Magic Realists". She also exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, Oakland Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum and numerous others.

Zana's work is in the Permanent Collection of the National Museum of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Cheney-Cowles Museum, Spokane, Washington and several others.