artists

HILDEGARDE HAAS
Download Resume

Hildegarde Haas's exuberant paintings pay homage to her love of baroque and chamber music. Years ago she wrote, "I paint music. Having the faculty of synesthesia, I experience an auditory stimulus pictorially. I perceive music in color and form."

Works such as Beethoven Opus 59 No. 3 IV (casein on paper) display her encompassing depictions of the instruments, movements and music as a whole. This small work (16" x 24") with its blues, reds, pinks and greens uses layers of angular shapes and lines to define and convey space. In some ways the work reads as stained glass; however, the proportion and containment of the composition reference an underlying deeper agenda. In contrast Haydn Opus 76 No. 1 I Allegro (casein on paper) depicts layers of circles floating amidst rectangles that seem to dance on the page. The bright reds and oranges and the soft pinks, lavenders and blues of this work read almost like a tissue on paper composition. The jarring stalagmite-like abstraction of Bach WTC Fugue 6 in D Minor (gouache on paper) in greens and reds dangles off the page with soft tension, while the Bach Cello Suite 6 Prelude (gouache on paper) pushes its gold and red strokes beyond the confines of the paper. The latter work reads very much as a vignette of more to come. The artist's contrasting decisions in composition and palette - the way in which each piece is perceived so differently than the other - speak to her finely tuned and highly developed sense of her subject matter.

While these works are steeped in her vast appreciation of fine music, one need not be a connoisseur on her level to appreciate her varied repertoire for conveying music through visual representation. As a body of work they utilize color fields outlined in black or white lines with a dynamic frenzy of shapes. Where she uses tight boxes of color or organic line, the amateur music lover may recall melodies that move frenetically or glide with grace from one movement to the next. Whether an aficionado of art or music, these works transport one to a harmonious place.

Haas was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and was educated at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center and the University of Chicago. Through a scholarship she studied under Vaclav Vytacil and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League. In 1951 she moved to Northern California. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Dallas Museum of Fine Art, the Seattle Museum of Fine Art, the Cleveland Art Museum, the Worcester Art Museum, the Georgetown University Gallery and the City of San Francisco.

— Therese Martin