Richard Haas

Background

Richard Haas was born on August 28, 1936, in Spring Green, Wisconsin, United States.

Career

He began his career as an abstract painter.

Between 1968 and 1974, he traveled extensively in Europe where he was influenced by the illusionistic painting of the Italians Tiepolo and Veronese, and the German baroque artists Balthazar Newmann and the Zimmerman brothers. His first trompe l'oeil mural was 112 Prince Street Facade (1974 - 1975), with illusory windows and architectural elements.

His first work was completed in 1975 in New York City's historic Soho district, transform bare or unsightly walls into illusory extensions of the urban landscape.

Later murals were less literal. In Boston Architectural Center (1977), for example, Haas projected a cross section of an imaginary domed structure onto the rear facade of a severe 1960's concrete building.

Haas accepts the serious role of preservationist but his subtle revisions of reality are meant also to surprise and amuse. In a series of photo-collages from 1975, he proposed painting shadows of several demolished architectural treasures on newer, less interesting buildings near their original sites. In two realized projects he accomplished similar restorations.

In Arcade, Peck Slip (1978), for example, at New York's South Street Seaport, a four-story Federal-style building complete with illusory storefronts abuts an equally illusory neoclassical "arcade", which frames a painted view of the Brooklyn Bridge, a real view of which is largely blocked by the bricks of the "arcade".

The Times Tower (1979) recreates the old New York Times building on a blank structure just across the street from where it once stood at 42nd Street and Broadway.

For Centre Theatre Facade (1981), in Milwaukee, the artist extended the Art Deco style of the building to its bare side wall but included an eight-story ziggurat window reflecting a view of the recently destroyed Pabst Building, long a Milwaukee landmark.

Achievements

• His murals have been commissioned as decoration for numerous public buildings in the United States.

Works

• book

  • The City Is My Canvas

    (Contemporary "trompe l'oeil" artist Richard Haas transfor...)

Membership

National Academy of Design (1993)

References

• Richard Haas: An Architecture of Illusion