Richard Haas
The following, submitted December 2001, is from Katherine S. Haas and is a biographical summary written by the artist.
Richard Haas was born in 1936 in Spring Green, Wisconsin. His father had a
business in this picturesque valley, which was also the home of Frank Lloyd Wright. Haas's earliest influences and exposure to the arts was through the Taliesen Foundation, which he visited and worked at as a teenager with his Uncle who was a stonemason for Mr. Wright. Haas moved to Milwaukee and ultimately attended the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee receiving his B.S. degree in 1958 and his M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1964.
Following his Graduate Studies, Mr. Haas taught Art at Michigan State in Lansing, Michigan and then moved to New York City where he took a teaching position at Bennington College in Vermont. He taught printmaking there for nearly ten years and gave up full-time teaching to pursue his mural career in 1979. Since then Richard has completed more than 120 murals, interior and exterior. He also occasionally takes a guest teaching position and lectures nationally and internationally.
He has received numerous prizes and honors, among them The American Institute of Architects Medal of Honor, (1977) The Municipal Art Society Award, (1977), Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987) and the Guggenheim Foundation (1983), the Doris C. Freedman Award (1989) and the Honorary Alumnus of the year from his Alma Mater, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
RESUME
1936 Born in Spring Green, Wisconsin
1959 B.S. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
1964 M.F.A., University of Minnesota
AWARDS/GRANTS
1991 Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Wisconsin
1989 Doris C. Freedman Award
1987 National Endowment for the Arts
1983 Guggenheim Fellowship
1977 New York City Municipal Art Society Award
1977 American Institute of Architects Medal of Honor
1998 National Academy Faculty Exhibition, New York, NY
ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2000 Trompe l'oeil Architectural Façades, Southern Alleghenies Museum,
Loretto, PA
Richard Haas, A Print Survey 1971-2000, Printworks, Chicago, Illinois
1999 Paintings, Prints and Drawings of Richard Haas, Hudson River Gallery,
Dobbs Ferry, New York
1998 Gateway to the Waterfront, The Richard Haas Exhibition, Art
on Main Street Yonkers, New York
1997 Richard Haas: Maquettes and Proposals, Art on Main Street, Yonkers, NY
Richard Haas, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia
1996 Richard Haas: Projects and Prints, Marsha Orr Contemporary Fine Art
Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida
New York Past and Present: Paintings, Drawings, Prints and an Installation by Richard Haas, The Century Association, The Century Association, New York,
1992 Richard Haas: Drawings, Paintings and Prints - University of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, WI
Richard Haas: Print Survey 1970-1991 Condeso/Lawler Gallery, New York
Richard Haas: Print Survey 1970-1991 Miramar Gallery, Sarasota, FL
Richard Haas: Prints & Models Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX
1990 Richard Haas: Architectural Projects & Architectural Facades 1976-86
Rhona Hoffman, Chicago, IL
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2001 City: Prints and Photographs from the '30s though Today, Brooke
Alexander Gallery, New York, New York
New York in Print, Michael Ingbar Gallery of Architectural Art, New York
176th Annual Exhibit, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
176th Annual Exhibit, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
Westchester Arts Council, Locations, Real and Imagined, White Plains, NY
2000-01 The Annual Professional Painter's Exhibition, The Century
Association, New York, New York
2000 Open Air Sketching, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York
New York Perspectives II, MB Modern, New York, New York
Self-Portraits, Printworks, Chicago, Illinois
New York Icons, Spaced Gallery of Architecture, New York, New York
13 Contemporary Realists, Recent works on Paper, David Findlay Jr.
Contemporary, New York, New York
Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, American Academy of
Arts and Letters, New York, New York
13 Contemporary Realists, Recent Works on Paper, David Findlay Jr.
Contemporary Art, New York, New York
Artists Revisit the Chrysler, Michael Ingbar Gallery, New York, New York
World Views, The Nabisco Gallery, East Hanover, New Jersey
Cig-Art4: Where there's Smoke, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus
Christi
Private Visions, David Findlay Jr. Contemporary, New York, New York
1999 Professional Painter's Exhibition, The Century Association, New York,
NY
Contemporary American Realist Drawings from the Jalane and Richard
Davidson Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill
Works on Paper: A Riverhouse Retrospective, Steamboat Springs, Colorado
The Annual Professional Painters' Exhibition, The Century Association, New
York
174th Annual Exhibition, The National Academy, New York, New York
Private Visions, Works on Paper, David Findlay Jr Contemporary, NYC
The creator of trompe l'oeil urban architectural monuments through printmaking and murals, Richard Haas focuses on city subjects, "from the ornate cast-iron industrial buildings of downtown (Manhattan) to the fantastical, titanium and glass Guggenheim Bilbao." Mediums include woodcut, drypoint, aquatint, screenprint, drawings, etching, pastel, oil and gouache. In the late 1990s, he began printing on aluminum rather than paper, which gave a strenthening, illuminated effect "to such icons as the Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge."
In 2005, a Catalogue Raisonne of his work, The Prints of Richard Haas, was published, having been written by Marilyn Kushner, curator at the Brooklyn Museum. It is described as ". . . a journey through the annals of modern architecture as through a printmaker's career." The survey begins with his woodcuts in the 1960s, many of them Expressionist-style portraits of well-known persons such as Einstein and Nietzsche. Later he went through a Minimalist phase, doing grid etchings. From the Catalogue, it is clear that geometric work by Piet Mondrian and organic-seeming architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright clearly influenced work by Haas.
He arrived in New York City from Wisconsin in 1968 and took a studio in SoHo. His first rendering of New York City architecture was a drypoint of the five-story Haughwout Building. From that time he did the fronts of numerous commercial structures, focusing on doors, rooflines and perspective to other buildings. Some of his works are birds-eye views and others are city panoramas such as views of Chicago, Munich and New York.
Haas has also done "shadow prints", which are silhouette's or shadows of buildings cast onto other buildings. Symbolizing the meeting of religion and commerce, an example of creating this effect is his work with a shadow of Temple Emanu-El on an office building on 42nd Street.
