One of the more colorful members of the bohemian art colony centered in New Orleans’ French Quarter from the 1920s through the 1940s, Colette Pope Heldner was devoted to her husband, Knute Heldner, a nationally famous artist and her one-time art teacher, but forged an artistic career of her own when she was widowed. After Knute’s death in 1952, the fiery redheaded Colette, who was twenty-five years her husband’s junior, was heard to say, “I am the only artist in the family!” Reveling in her newly found artistic freedom, Heldner redefined traditional French Quarter scenes and landscape compositions with a bold new expressionism that utilized bright, garish color and a distortion of form.—Susan Saward, 2012
