Helmut Becker

A new exhibition is opening at Westland Gallery on February 5th 2019. This retrospective exhibition displays work by London artist Helmut Becker, professor emeritus at Western University. Becker’s wood engravings are generated from the deeply carved hardwood planks, boards and plywood displayed for the first time in substantive numbers.
 
In the narrative of the twentieth century, Helmut Becker has served as an important printmaker within Canadian art and art internationally. A substantial goal of Helmut’s career is the research and development of technologies pertaining to the use of fibre flax and industrial hemp in papermaking, reducing the cultivation of trees in creating paper.
 
During his visit to Regina in 1963, internationally acclaimed art critic Clement Greenberg saw Becker’s woodcut blocks and suggested that they never be marred or destroyed – as is common practice when a print edition is complete - but instead save them for a future exhibition.  It is the culmination of this lifetime of work that is exhibited in this collection.
 

Helmut Becker was born in 1931 in the Alberta Badlands and grew up in rural Saskatchewan, where he was strongly influenced by artist and teacher Wynona Mulcaster. Her approach to art as a heartfelt method of communication resonated with the young Becker.

Becker studied Art and Art History at the University of Saskatchewan and Printmaking and Drawing at the University of Wisconsin. Throughout his career, Becker has taught Printmaking, Papermaking, Hand Papermaking and Fibre Flax & Hemp Research at Nova Scotia College of Art, the University of Calgary and the University of Western Ontario.