Helen Bell Bruton (February 7, 1898 – November 16, 1985) was an American printmaker, mosaic muralist and painter.
Biography
She was the daughter of Daniel Bruton (1839–1928) and Helen Bell Bruton (1866–1956). Daniel and Helen Bell married in 1893. As a successful tobacco merchant, Daniel commissioned Denis Straub & Son to construct the family home at 1240 St. Charles Street in Alameda. This house was sold by the family in 1944. She had two sisters: Margaret Bruton (1894–1983) and Anne Esther Bruton Gilman (1896–1992).
Helen Bruton began her formal studies at the University of California, Berkeley, but her education was interrupted by World War I. During the war, she and her sisters contributed to the war effort at the Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. In 1920–21, for two years, she continued her artistic education in New York at the Art Students' League, learning under sculptors Alexander Calder, who was teaching there between 1918 and 1922, and Leo Lentelli. Later, she was also studying in New York under Boardman Robinson in his drawing class. In her 1975 interview, however, she did not recall any strong artistic influences in her career. Her and her sisters' source of income was partially based on their San Francisco property rental. Asked about her style she replied "I've always been more interested in people, I never was a very abstract thinker", she considered herself, to some extent, a late Ashcan School artist.
Early Monterey period (1922–1929) There were two periods when Helen Bruton resided in Monterey, California. The family built and furnished a house in Monterey and stayed in it "on and off" as it was their summer place and "Monterey was small and simple at that time". She recalls:
She was associated with the Monterey Group of painters who were meeting at the Stevenson's House. Some of them were associated with the Society of Six.
Early Great Depression years
In about 1929 during the early Great Depression, while her sisters embarked on an artistic expedition to New Mexico (Taos and Santa Fe), Bruton moved to Los Angeles. There, she worked at the Gladding McBean tile company, creating terra cotta portrait panels which are now preserved at the University of Southern California's Mudd Memorial Library. When the stock market crashed in 1929 she was in Los Angeles finishing the "philosophers" job. She recalled:
Out of artist's rebellion she painted clouds on the sky in the form of dogs on Emerson's image because she was prevented, by the dean of the University of Southern California Philosophy Department, to paint dogs close to Emerson himself.
She and her sisters continued to exhibit at Beaux Arts Galerie (116 Maiden Lane) in San Francisco where she presented wood blocks art, tiles, and prints. One of the prints displayed was titled "The Party," it was etched on the occasion of a party held at the Stevenson's House in Monterey to bid farewell to someone leaving for Paris to study art.
Mosaic art (1933–1939)
In 1930 she ventured into the world of mosaics, working on projects supported by Public Works Administration and Works Progress Administration.
Partnering with her sister Margaret, she designed the exterior mosaic panels for the Fleishacker Zoo Mother House in San Francisco, an undertaking of the Federal Art Project. That project started at the end of 1933 with local materials and with the technical help of Antonio (Anthony) Falcier, an Italian mosaic maker who previously worked on Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle in San Simeon:
One of the mosaics showcases a boy and a girl alongside a horse, dog, and rabbit, titled Children and Their Animal Friends. The second mosaic, St. Francis, portrays the revered protector of animals and the namesake of San Francisco, encompassed by a deer, wolf, snake, and several birds.
Bruton was also an active member of the California Society of Etchers and the Progressive California Painters.
In 1935, Egyptian-style mosaics by Helen Bruton were added in the entryway of the Golden West Hotel which is now named Hotel Union Square.
Helen Bruton mosaic Sculpture and Dance, influenced in part by the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, was commissioned by the Federal Art Project, spearheaded by Eugen Neuhaus, and installed in 1936 on the wall of the Old Art Gallery of the University of Berkeley. Originally it was built as the central heating and power plant building and converted to a gallery in 1934.