Helen Rosenberg

A Retrospective Exhibition

Summer 2025

Helen Rosenberg has been intermittently creating artwork, including drawings, oils, watercolors, and prints, for over six decades. Her commitment to art began at age 11 when she decided to follow in the footsteps of her maternal grandfather, Samuel Riss, a farmer and self-trained artist in upstate New York.

A native of Rutland, Vermont, her love of visualizing landscapes and cityscapes never left her. While pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Vermont she explored the depiction of motion through drawings and paintings, with the understanding that nothing is ever still.

Although Rosenberg eventually decided on a career in urban planning, with a hiatus as a bookseller in the 1980’s as co-owner of Book World in New Haven, she continued to paint and draw. For about 20 years, starting in the early 1990s, she studied with the accomplished watercolor artist Graziella de Solodow at the Creative Arts Workshop.

In 2010, with the Jewish Federation’s Women of Vision Grant-funded program “Jewish Women Artists” (conceived of by BEKI’s own Paula Hyman, z’l), Rosenberg initiated a rotating exhibit program at BEKI, which has been facilitated by Cynthia Rubin as well as by Margaret Olin, Mary Lesser, Diane Krevolin, Diana Firestone, Dan Weintraub and many others over the past 15 years. Through this art gallery program, Helen has been able to combine her love of the BEKI community and her love of visual art.

This exhibition marks Helen Rosenberg’s first public solo exhibition. She has not shown in any galleries other than the student shows at New Haven’s Creative Arts Workshop, and the recent BEKI members exhibition. Many friends and relatives have admired her artworks at the private Rosenberg Residence Gallery, from which many works in this exhibition are drawn. Her work is also represented in her sister’s house on the Upper West Side in New York City and her daughter’s house in New Haven.