Obituaries
Helen K. Siegl, Known for Artistry
Helen K. Haselburger Siegl, 84, formerly of Mount Airy, an artist who captured children’s imaginations in her prints and book illustrations, died of heart disease Jan. 26 at her home in Big Flats, N.Y., where she had lived since 1990.
Mrs. Siegl’s woodcuts, lithographs, and etchings are included in museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery.
She produced art for UNICEF calendars and gained a reputation for illustrating children’s books, including Birds and Beasts, Earrings for Celia, and Indian Tales. In 1991, she won an award from The New York Times Book Review for her illustrations for Dancing Palm Tree, a collection of Nigerian folk tales. Mrs. Siegl often used her eight children as models.
During World War II, when wood was scarce in her native Austria, she developed a unique plaster-block technique that she continued to use.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Mrs. Siegl held the record for the largest volume of work sold by an artist at the Philadelphia Print Club. Her animal prints were especially popular. Later, she turned to religious subjects. In 1995, her work “Images from the Old Testament” was exhibited at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary’s library in Wynnewood.
An Inquirer art critic described Mrs. Siegl’s colorful prints as “a world apart from the decidedly dull piety of illustrated Bible stories. They have instead a smidgen of a dynamic graphic quality of the best comic strips.”
Mrs. Siegl graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1952, she married Theodor Siegl. The couple lived in Montreal before moving to Philadelphia, where he was a conservator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
When he died in 1976, their youngest children were 10 and 12. She was able to cope because she was resourceful and devoutly religious, her son Philip said.
As a young woman in Austria, Mrs. Siegl considered entering the cloistered abbey of the Benedictine nuns at Nonnberg, made famous by The Sound of Music. For the last 18 years, she lived near Mount Saviour, a Benedictine monastery in Pine City, N.Y. She trekked two miles for morning Mass and returned for evening Vespers until osteoporosis set in, her son said.
Mrs. Siegl, who sheltered Jews in Austria during World War II, took part in protests against the Vietnam War and, more recently, the war in Iraq.
Her guests were always treated to lively debate, thick Viennese coffee, or a slice of Linzertorte.
In 2004, Mrs. Siegl told a reporter that being creative was an affirmation of life.
“Awe and wonder, joy and ecstasy have greater power than death and suffering.”
In addition to her son Philip, Mrs. Siegl is survived by sons Christopher, Thomas, Nicholas, Andrew, and George; a daughter, Elizabeth Katz; and 17 grandchildren. Another son, Michael, died in 1975.
A Funeral Mass will be said at 1 p.m. Saturday at Mount Saviour Monastery Chapel, Monastery Road, Pine City, N.Y. 14871. Memorial donations may be made to the monastery.
Originally published by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The final contact line was incomplete in the supplied source text and has been omitted.