Printmaker and multi-media artist Helga Thomson was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1938. She studied under painter/printmakers Wilhelm Dohme and Pompeyo and Eduardo Audivert. She worked and exhibited in Argentina while also raising a family through the mid 1970s, but as the upheaval of impending military dictatorship grew, they fled to Brazil, then Europe. There they lived for a time in Holland where Thomson studied at the Royal School of Art at the Hague. The family then moved to Paris, where Thomson studied at Atelier E. Caporaso and with Jean Lodge. Finally, they setttled in the U.S. where Thomson took Ann Zahn's Printmaking Workshop in Bethesda, MD. Printmaking soon became her primary medium and she enrolled in courses at Montgomery College, MD and at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C.

Thomson remained connected to Argentina throughout her career. In 1987 she organized the Exchange Exhibition at the City Museum of Buenos Aires, and in 1989 she was a teaching member of the Buenos Aires Taller de Artes Visuales with Hermenegildo Sabat. SIn 1995, she returned to teach a seminar titled "New Safe Printmaking Techniques" at the studio of Matilde Marin in Bueno Aires. Later in her career she participated in the IV Latin American Graphic Biennial and an exhibition at the Universidad del Cine, both in Buenos Aires.

In 1979 she helped found the Washington Area Printmakers association, for which she served as the exhibition chairpersonand. She was also a member of the Maryland Printmakers, the American Print Alliance, the Print Center of Philadelphia, the Washington Project for Arts/Corcoran, the Arlington Arts Center, Pyramid Atlantic, and the Central Asian Cultural Exchange. She was a mentor for the award-winning Corcoran Arts Mentorship youth arts program from 1993 to 2005. 

In 1994 thomson received a fellowship from the Virginis Center for the Creative Arts for her work on the series "Torsos as Containers." In 2002 she was given a retrospective in Germany, "In the Universe of the Prints," at the Winckelmann-Museum of Stendel. She continued to work until the 2010s. Helga Thomson, whose legal married name was then Helga Thomson Duhm, died in April 1, 2026.

Helga Thomson's art is held in the collections of the Georgetown University Booth Family Center for Special Collections and the Library of Congress.