As a young girl Helen Barbieri had two artistic passions: music and painting. The flute she played as a child she put away as an adult. But her watercolors followed her through life.
Her early pieces were abstract, blurred and mostly moody depictions of landscapes, rock quarries and scenes of nature. In one a four-piece jazz combo performs in a post-impressionistic nightclub of shadows, smoke and vibrant, amorphous patches of color.
In the last decade of her life, after she divorced and lived with her brother, Don Fattig, in Hendersonville, N.C., and her son went into the ministry, Barbieri began painting religious figures and spending much of her time doing church work.
“She painted a picture for me that I have hanging in my office, a Resurrection picture,” said her son, Chris Barbieri of Rome, Ga. “But I think one of her favorite paintings was a picture of a laughing Jesus. She painted many of them. I think the last painting she did was a laughing Jesus. She gave it to one of my wife’s friends as a present.”
Barbieri, 74, died Dec. 18, within months of being diagnosed with lung cancer. A memorial service will be held for her at 2 p.m. Feb. 2 at First United Methodist Church in Rome.
Barbieri was born in Knoxville, Tenn., but grew up in Atlanta, graduating from Druid Hills High School in 1956. She was a finalist in the 1958 Miss DeKalb beauty pageant. Her brother said that in 1963 she became the first student to earn an art degree from Georgia State University, then known as Georgia State College.
She and her husband, Chris Barbieri, moved to Savannah in 1969, where she was offered a position on the founding faculty at Savannah College of Art and Design but declined so she could stay at home and raise her son. After the couple divorced she moved to Atlanta in 1996.
She was secretary to the president of the Atlanta Arts Festival, and, for a time she taught art at GSU and in Atlanta public schools. “But that didn’t last long because the whole classroom management and the fact that everyone was not as fascinated about art as she was, was frustrating to her,” her son said.
Barbieri was never much of a self-promoter, her family said. “She was humble about her work,” her son said. “Her home was not decorated with a lot of her paintings. She gave most of them away.” For a time, her work was sold through Sears in the Vincent Price Collection, and her paintings were used on greeting cards issued by the Montag Stationary Co.
In addition to her brother and son, Barbieri is survived by a sister-in-law, Barbara Fattig; a daughter-in-law, Jennifer Barbieri; a granddaughter, Anna Grace Barbieri; and nephews Karl Fattig and Kurt Fattig.
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