[2] During her life, she contributed to various avant-gardes of the 20th century, with a personal, de-conditioned vision, which evolved from the surrealist practices the 30s to the adoption of a repeated geometric unit to express the three-dimensional movement in sculpture.

Her biomorphic, hermetic imaginary, her use of positive and negative spaces in both sculpture and printmaking, and her strong, pure color, opened new paths in artistic expression.

In 1936, Phillips won the school's Phelan Travelling Fellowship, a competitive scholarship with which she funded a year of study abroad.

The Reeders introduced Phillips to Stanley William (Bill) Hayter (British, 1901–1988), founder of the experimental printmaking studio Atelier 17.

Atelier 17’s attendees were the leading modernists: Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, and Vieira da Silva.

The three sculptures created by Helen Phillips evoke Chinese musicians: Blowing the Horn, Playing the Flute and Banging the Drum.

They stayed for a few months with their friend Julian Trevelyan and spent time with Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, and Erno and Ursula Goldfinger and in 1940 they left for the United States.

They moved around in New York and Connecticut until finally, in 1944, the family of four settled at 247 Waverly Place, where both artists had space to work.

In 1941 her hieratic sculpture Inverted Head was included in Surrealism, organized by Matta at the New School for Social Research.

The other artists were Arshile Gorky, David Hare, Roberto Matta, Wilfredo Lam, and Isamu Noguchi.

In London, Phillips was guest of honor at the Women’s International Art Club in 1955 and exhibited prints at the Erskine Gallery that same year.

In the 1950s, Phillips’s prints combined deep bite etching and simultaneous color printing—leaving out burin work altogether.

In 1953 Phillips and Hayter bought a house in Alba la Romaine, in the Ardeche, where they spent their summers.

Phillips started carving monumental totems in ancient oak; her images and colors in printmaking became bolder, decisive, and increased in size.

Using Thompson’s concept of a universal pattern, she evolved a seemingly endless variety of forms, columns, spirals etc.

In 1967, she injured her back while moving Alabaster Column, which had been just bought by the Knox Albright Museum, and her marriage ended (eventually finalized in 1972).