M. Lee Stone Fine Prints, Inc. is proud to offer this exhibition of the works of Hildegarde Haas. This exhibition is the first retrospective of her color woodcuts. Her oeuvre consists of a total of 57 woodcuts between 1947 and 1953 and one print in 1957. There are also several paintings that relate to her woodcut designs included in this exhibition.

The Mountain 1950

Brown Twilight 1948

Desolation 1948

Hildegarde Haas was born in Frankfurt, Germany in1926. Her parents moved to the United States around 1937 and eventually settled in Dallas, Texas in 1938. Her painting won her prizes in the Dallas Allied Arts Exhibitions of 1943 and 1944 and she exhibited paintings at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1945. She continued to show her paintings and prints in many future museum exhibitions where her work won favorable critical acclaim.

Orange Night 1949

Pillars of the Canyon 1951

Fall 1948

Haas attended summer classes at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and studied under the tutelage of Boardman Robinson.

Town in the Hills 1951

Autumn Mountain 1953

Rocky Shore 1950

Haas entered the University of Chicago under the 2 year accelerated graduation schedule where she graduated with honors and received her BA degree. She received a scholarship to study at the Arts Students League in New York in 1946 where she studied under Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor. Although she was an accomplished painter she became fascinated with the possibilities of the woodcut medium and began to teach herself the intricacies of the color woodcut. She was later quoted, "I am primarily interested in landscape as a theme in order to discover the underlying patterns and hidden order in the world about me".

Night City 1953

Plants 1947

Fog 1950

Haas, along with other established New York graphic artists began to exhibit together. This group included (William) Ross Abrams, Seong Moy, William Rose, Peter Kahn, Rubin Reif, Jim Forsberg, Dorothy Morton, Wold Kahn and Aaron Kurzen. These artists and several others began exhibiting under the group name of "The Printmakers". The Jacques Seligman Gallery of New York featured this group of artists in their Contemporary American Department in several exhibitions.

Orange River 1950

Glowing Night 1948

Rain 1952

One art critic stated Haas's approach to her woodcuts "she employs such natural forms as still life, fish, plants, trees, mountains, etc., simplifies them, rearranges time arbitrarily into a design, using from two to five color blocks to express the mood and enrich the pattern of values".

Canyon Walls - Night 1953

Winter 1949

Canyon Walls - Noon 1953

Haas's woodcuts were exhibited extensively in New York and nationally in the late 1940's and early 1950's. She exhibited "Desolation" at the Northwest Printmakers in the Seattle Art Museum and the Print Club of Philadelphia. This image, produced in 1948, is a 4 color bold woodcut with it's jagged edges giving the impression of isolation as well as the desolate feeling Haas is trying to convey. In 1950 her color woodcut "Fog" was featured at the Brooklyn Museum and the Library of Congress. "Fog" was also awarded the Dallas Print Society Purchase Award at the Dallas Museum of Art. Haas's keen sense of design using the natural forest-like shapes and her choice of color gives a vibrant quality to this landscape. The color woodcut "Lone Tree" of 1948 moved away from the sharp geometric or abstract forms and offers a beautiful serene landscape in soft muted tones. In contrast the 1951 print entitled "Pillars Of The Canyon" gives one an insight into this wilderness of geometric shapes carved out the canyon walls. Haas uses an earth tone palate that enhances the viewer's appreciation of this wondrous environment.

River Morning 1951

Frosty Window 1951

Broken Tree 1948