Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist icon, novelist and philosopher who bestrode the 20th century, had a younger sister called Hélène. She was not famous like Simone but she was every bit as radical and prolific, as both a feminist and a painter. It seems ridiculous that history would have sidelined this woman whose work Picasso complimented at her first Paris show in 1936, calling it “original”. She was also president of a women’s refuge, and signed 1971’s influential Manifesto of the 343 Women, in which the signatories all admitted to having had an illegal abortion. Hélène even declared herself a feminist before Simone.
Now, with a show of her paintings opening at the Amar Gallery in London, the record is being set straight, as Hélène finally receives the recognition many feel she is due. “Our whole mission,” says gallerist Amar Singh, “is to search for overlooked artists.” Singh regales me with tales of cross-continental wild goose chases on the trail of collectors who might just sell. Once he hits upon an artist, he says, he looks into why they may have been sidelined. “It is always,” says the gallerist, “down to gender, race or sexuality.”
He stumbled upon Hélène because he has a special interest in work from 1930s Paris. “Dora Maar, Jean Cocteau … and Hélène was there. I started looking at her artworks and was like, ‘Wow, these are beautiful.’” An idle thought occurred to him: “‘I wonder if she’s related to Simone.’ Then the story unfolded – and it blew my mind.”
The sisters worked together, championed each other, protected each other, were jealous of each other, and fought with each other, says Singh. When Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosopher and writer who was Simone’s long-term partner, rejected his Nobel peace prize, the paparazzi were all after him. “He hid at Hélène’s home!” says Singh.
The show is called The Woman Destroyed, after the 1967 collection of three stories by Simone that, other than Hélène’s portraits of her sister, was the siblings’ sole artistic collaboration. Hélène created a series of engravings to reflect the emotions of one of the female protagonists, whose husband admits to having an affair. The works were exhibited in Paris at the time, as well as published in Elle magazine.
The story is said to have been influenced by the experience of their mother, while also reflecting Simone’s status compared with that of Sartre. A rare first edition of the book will be part of the exhibition, along with 13 oil paintings and nine watercolours spanning Hélène’s career – her journey from the figurative to the abstract, often with strong feminist and environmentalist themes.
“Hélène was ahead of her time,” says Claudine Monteil, a close friend of the sisters who has written six books about them and will travel to London to promote the exhibition. “She did paintings of the 1968 student revolution and went on to women’s issues in the 70s, and the defence of nature and the environment. In a lot of her paintings, there are animals and there are women, some of whom have been oppressed. She also did paintings of immigrants – women who lost everything. She did these 50 years ago.”
As Monteil talks, a strong picture of the sisters and what drove them emerges. Monteil was a disillusioned student activist when she first met Simone, 42 years her senior. “It was a macho movement, a student leftist movement,” she says, recalling that she found little in it that was particularly leftist. “It was,” she sums up, “a fabulous trend.”
In 1970, when she was 20, Monteil and some other women “dropped the student movement and founded the women’s liberation movement”. Sartre, who was supportive of young activists, heard about Monteil and introduced her to Simone, at that time one of the most famous women in the world. “They were icons for human rights. Simone had supported the Algerian independence movement. She had to leave her apartment for two years and hide in Paris because she had death threats every day. And Sartre’s apartment was bombed.”
Monteil had admired Hélène’s work from afar, having been to the exhibition of illustrations for The Woman Destroyed, but Hélène was married to a diplomat and lived near Strasbourg. “I loved the way Simone wrote about Hélène. She seemed like a very warm person.” Monteil was also aware that, like herself, Hélène signed Simone’s Manifesto of the 343 Women – terrifying her prominent husband.
In 1975, Simone asked Monteil to represent her at the opening in Strasbourg of the first women’s shelter, of which Hélène was president. “It was my secret dream,” says Monteil, “and it was love at first sight.” The meeting between Monteil and Hélène sparked jealousy in Simone. “And now she pretends that she was feminist before me!” ranted Simone about her sister. “That’s right,” Monteil replied naively. “She said she had been feminist before you, because men were trying to seduce her, and they found the excuse of saying, ‘We would love to see your paintings.’ And then they would come to the art studio and try to harass her.”
Simone’s reaction, recalls Monteil, “was very funny and charming, because their relationship had always been about Simone” – the elder sister by two years – “protecting Hélène. Their mother had always treated Hélène more harshly.” The sisters were from an old aristocratic family: Simone’s father treated her as the son he’d longed for, as if to prepare her to become head of the family.
When Simone started earning a small salary from teaching in her early 20s, she spent half of it renting a little studio for Hélène to paint in. Hélène’s first solo exhibition in Paris in 1936 – before Simone was ever published – was at Galerie Jacques Bonjean, which was co-founded by Christian Dior before he went into fashion. This was where she received Picasso’s nod of approval. Monteil recalls: “Hélène said to me, ‘This is the best compliment Picasso could give to me, because he was so fed up with people trying to imitate him.’”
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Hélène was well known in Paris but never became a famous artist. Her gender was undoubtedly a factor – but, says Monteil, it was also largely a result of her husband’s employment taking her away from Paris and the centre of the art world, where part of the job was “going to parties and meeting wealthy people who could support them, organise exhibitions, events and so forth. Hélène spent seven years in Italy, three years in Morocco, three years in Yugoslavia. And she was in Vienna right after the war, when nothing worked.”
Her early paintings were also figurative, which wasn’t fashionable at the time. “But every time she did exhibit in Paris,” says Monteil, “she got very nice reviews.” Her works are in the permanent collections of various prestigious museums from the Pompidou in Paris to the Uffizi in Florence.
Hélène, 40 years older than Monteil, became like a beloved aunt to the younger woman. She would stay with Monteil when visiting Paris, even drafting her in as a life model. “She said, ‘Do you mind?’ I said, ‘No.’” This was for a large painting of men pointing at and judging a naked woman, who has an exaggeratedly pert bottom. “But you see,” says Monteil with a smile, “I don’t have the hips that she gave me.”
Monteil feels a special connection to Hélène’s semi-abstract works inspired by the “revolution” of May 1968. “We had demonstrations,” she recalls. “We had barricades in Paris. She made a series of paintings about the police and the students called Le Joli Mois de Mai, which were a big hit.” The title translates as The Lovely Month of May.
Would Hélène, as a feminist and environmentalist, be in despair at the state of the world today? “She would be fighting like crazy,” says Monteil. “Yes, she would probably be in despair, but most probably she would say, ‘We won’t give up. It’s desperate, but we’ll continue.’”
Monteil remembers Hélène as an inspiring figure, a fount of good advice, the best of which was: “Even if you’re betrayed, continue to trust humankind.” When Hélène lived in Strasbourg, she invited residents of the women’s refuge she was president of to her garden for afternoon tea. “She was loved by everyone,” says Monteil. “She was loved for good reason – she was very positive and very sharp.”
Hélène saw in the new millennium, dying in 2001 at the age of 91. By that time, she had lost her strength yet never stopped dreaming of returning to her studio. “She was so frail in the half-light,” says Monteil of one of their final meetings. “Her emaciated fingers grasped my hands. She gave me her most beautiful smile and whispered, ‘Claudine, my paintings – do you think they will last?’”