Helen Stadelbauer
1910 - 2006
One of Alberta’s earliest pioneers of modernist art, Helen Stadelbauer is hailed for her vivid sketches, paintings, and photographs of Canadiana. She devoted her life to arts education and transformed the University of Calgary’s Department of Art into the outstanding institution it became.
Born in Calgary in 1910, Stadelbauer cultivated her drawing and painting skills during regular family vacations in the Rocky Mountains. After becoming a high school art teacher, she taught for eight years in rural and urban schools, but continued her own arts education at the Banff School of the Arts and other institutions, and through landscape painting tours of Calgary and Banff. In 1945, when the University of Alberta’s Calgary branch absorbed the Calgary Normal School where she taught, Stadelbauer became one of the first members of its Education faculty. After receiving an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art, she moved to New York to earn her MA at Columbia University, and later to London to achieve a full diploma from the Royal Drawing Society.
Inspired by her experiences at Columbia, in 1963 Stadelbauer created and headed the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and also launched its BA programs in Art, Drama, and Music. She taught for thirty-one years until she retired in 1989, but continued generating hundreds of prints, sketches, and modernist Canadian landscapes and incorporating influences from the Group of Seven and avant garde artists such as Bridget Riley.
Even following her death in 2006, Stadelbauer continued blessing arts education in Calgary by having willed a portion of her estate and five of her paintings to the University of Calgary to fund scholarships in developmental art, studio art, and art history, disciplines she had helped establish there.
Born in Calgary in 1910, Stadelbauer cultivated her drawing and painting skills during regular family vacations in the Rocky Mountains. After becoming a high school art teacher, she taught for eight years in rural and urban schools, but continued her own arts education at the Banff School of the Arts and other institutions, and through landscape painting tours of Calgary and Banff. In 1945, when the University of Alberta’s Calgary branch absorbed the Calgary Normal School where she taught, Stadelbauer became one of the first members of its Education faculty. After receiving an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art, she moved to New York to earn her MA at Columbia University, and later to London to achieve a full diploma from the Royal Drawing Society.
Inspired by her experiences at Columbia, in 1963 Stadelbauer created and headed the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and also launched its BA programs in Art, Drama, and Music. She taught for thirty-one years until she retired in 1989, but continued generating hundreds of prints, sketches, and modernist Canadian landscapes and incorporating influences from the Group of Seven and avant garde artists such as Bridget Riley.
Even following her death in 2006, Stadelbauer continued blessing arts education in Calgary by having willed a portion of her estate and five of her paintings to the University of Calgary to fund scholarships in developmental art, studio art, and art history, disciplines she had helped establish there.