Hildegarde Haas

1926-2002

Hildegarde Haas was born in Frankfort, Germany in 1926. Her education included summer classes at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center followed by two years at the University of Chicago. Receiving a scholarship to the Art Students League, she studied under Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor. She was completely self-taught as a printmaker and explored the woodcut medium with other students at the ASL and "learned as she went."

Haas was a member of The Printmakers, an established group of New York graphic artists whose ranks included Ross Abrams, Seong Moy, William Rose, Peter Kahn, Ruben Reif, Jim Forsberg, Wolf Kahn, Dorothy Morton, and Aaron Kurzen.

Her woodcuts were included in the exhibition Young American Printmakers at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1953. She exhibited nationally at juried exhibitions and her work frequently drew comments by critics highlighting these shows.

Haas executed color woodblock prints for only six or seven years. The physical demands of carving her own blocks and hand printing each impression were too great so she put down her knives and gouges and exchanged them for brushes. Since then her creative focus has been painting and she continues to paint.

She moved to Northern California in 1951 where she became affiliated with Bay Area art organizations, including the San Francisco Art and Oakland Art Associations and The Arts and Crafts Coop in Berkeley. Haas continued to exhibit in national and local painting and print exhibitions.

She was honored with individual shows at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and the Kaiser Aluminum Corporation and her work is represented in the permanent collections of MOMA, Library of Congress, City of San Francisco, Seattle Museum of Fine Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Worcester Art Museum, and the Cleveland Art Museum.

Hildegarde Haas died in Berkeley, California in 2002. Public collections holding works by Hildegarde Haas include Dallas Museum of Art, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Haas works can be found by using the search collection option on each museum's web site).

Haas was among 83 artists profiled in Paths to the Press: Printmaking and American Women Artists 1910-1960, edited by Elizabeth G. Seaton and published by Beach Museum, Kansas State University: 2006. This catalog accompanied an exhibition organized by the Beach Museum and travelling nationally in 2005-2007.