Helen S. "Reds" Torr (1886âÂÂ1967) was an American early Modernist painter nicknamed "Reds" for her hair color. Torr worked alongside her artist husband Arthur Dove and friend Georgia O'Keeffe to develop a characteristically American style of Modernism in the 1920s.
Torr was born in Roxborough, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, in 1886. In 1906, Helen Torr won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she studied under William Merritt Chase. She also studied at Drexel University.
Throughout her career, Torr tended to focus on the creation of both oil paintings and charcoal-based drawings. Torr's work was exhibited publicly only twice during her life, one of those at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery An American Place in 1933 as part of a group show. Torr was reluctant to put her works in exhibitions and found encouragement through her friendships. Most of her work was not shown during her lifetime. Torr outlived her husband Arthur Dove by 21 years but never resumed painting, and requested that all her paintings and drawings be destroyed. Instead, her sister donated much of her work to the Heckscher Museum, which exhibited a show of her work in 1972.
In 1980 the Graham Gallery in New York held a solo exhibition of her work. Some of her works are currently held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The cottage in which she and Dove resided was acquired in 1998 by the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York. In 2000, it was accepted into the Historic Artistsâ Homes and Studios Program administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Torr was reluctant to put her works in exhibitions and found encouragement through her friendships. Most of her work was not shown during her lifetime. Throughout her career, Torr tended to focus on the creation of both oil paintings and charcoal-based drawings.
Her first marriage was to the cartoonist Clive Weed.
Torr met fellow artist Arthur Dove in Westport, Connecticut, which resulted in both artists leaving their first marriages. Around 1924, the couple settled aboard a sailboat anchored in Halesite on Long Island. In 1933, they moved to Dove's hometown, Geneva, New York, where they lived until 1938 when they moved to a cottage in Centerport on Long Island. They lived in the cottage until Dove's death in 1946. Throughout their life the couple suffered from economic hardship and lived in extreme poverty. Torr died in Bayshore, Long Island, New York, in 1967.
There are many public collections in the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington Long Island, New York; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; and the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln Nebraska.