Helen Dahm

Helen Dahm or Helene Dahm ( born May 21, 1878 in Egelshofen, † May 24 1968 in Männedorf ) was a Swiss painter of Expressionism.

Life

Helen Dahm came from a middle-class family and grew up in Kreuzlingen. After the bankruptcy of his father's textile company in 1897, the family moved to Zurich, where her mother ran a boarding house for students. Your first drawing lessons was Helen Dahm at Hermann Gattiker and Ernst Wuertenberger who advised her strongly for the continuation of studies. A scholarship she was able to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under Julius Exter between 1906-1913. Within a short time Dahm made ​​the acquaintance of the most famous artists of the city, including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky. The contact with the artist group Der Blaue Reiter she coined strong.

In 1913, Helen Dahm moved together with the Berlin art historian and painter Else Strantz back to Zurich, where she earned her living by product design. They also worked intensively with the painting, but without much recognition. 1919 pulled the two women to Oetwil am See. After the separation of the long-standing partner Else Strantz in 1932 Helen Dahm got into a serious existential crisis. In 1938, she broke up their household and moved with a group of women in the ashram of Meher Baba in India. She intended on finding a new spiritually fulfilled life to stay there forever. Major work of this period are the murals for Meher Baba's tomb. After her serious illness of dysentery Helen Dahm returned a year later returned to Switzerland, where they settled down again in Oetwil am See.

In addition to abstract and mystical religious works, Dahm sat repeatedly dealt with nature and landscape representation. 1953 her work was honored by an extensive retrospective at the Kunsthaus Zurich helmet and thereby succeeded the long awaited breakthrough; In 1954 Helen Dahm became the first woman against the Zurich Art Prize. Helen Dahm died in the spring of 1968 in Männedorf.