Helena Hugo

Artist Biography

​

​

Biography Helena Hugo has been a full time artist since graduating from the University of Pretoria in 1996, majoring in painting. She specialises in detailed pastel portraits, mostly of South African and migrant hand labourers, but her media also include drawings in charcoal, pencil and oil as well as fibre arts, mostly by utilising re-appropriated clothing previously worn and owned by South African and migrant workers. Apart from “work” as a subject matter she also investigates our universal human condition and the cycle of birth, death and resurrection in humans and in nature She has exhibited her work countrywide, in London, Holland, France, America and China.

​

Art works have been bought by corporate collectors like Standard Chartered Bank, London, The University of Johannesburg, The Johannesburg Eye Hospital, Vulisango Holdings, The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, Ukwazi Mining Industry Consultants, UNISA, William Humphreys Art Gallery, Absa Bank, the National Museum of China, The Pretoria Art Museum as well as private collectors around the world. Her merits include, finalist for the BP Portrait Awards, London, finalist for the Momentum/Topbilling lifestyle awards, and finalist for Absa Atelier, Sanlam Portrait, Eukurhuleni, Brett Kebble and New Signature Art Awards.

​

She has earned a top 10 position at the Eukurhuleni Fine Arts Awards, a top 5 position at the Sanlam Portrait Awards and a first prize in the Pastel Painting Contest, organised by Collection Beaux-Arts Réaliste et Impressionniste, Montréal. In 2008 she obtained a grant from the National Arts Council to partially fund an exhibition about work. In 2011 she was the ABSA KKNK's festival artist for that year. In 2012 she was one of four recipients of the Bettie Cilliers-Barnard Award, a Rendezvous project which took the form of a month long residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris in July 2013.