Michel Haas

(1934-2019)

Michel Haas was born in Paris in 1934. He studied philosophy before turning to the visual arts. For him, "the interest of art is to show the world and also to show man's place in the world".[1].

Michel Haas draws his inspiration from the world around him. Living in Paris, he paints life in the city: people captured in moments of life in everyday scenes, men, couples, cyclists, animals, men drinking, musicians, dancers, trees, flowers, everything that makes up life.

Michel Haas's various practices - painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture - have paper in common. In painting, the artist prefers paper to canvas because of its fragility and sensuality. There is something "primal" about Haas's technique. He doesn't use a brush. He works directly on paper with his hands, adding other simple, everyday materials such as water, charcoal and glue, to which he mixes pastel. The motifs emerge from the paper, from the material worked and triturated. Haas macerates his paper, digs into it, digs into it violently with his color sticks until the desired shape is "cooked", as he puts it.[2]. You could also say that he manipulates the material until he extracts its substance from within. This in-depth work animates his motifs, breathing life into them.

Solo exhibitions followed one another from 1975 onwards. First in Paris, then gradually on an international scale. In 1988, his work was presented at the Holly Salomon Gallery in New York. The same year saw his first exhibition at the Jan Krugier Gallery in Geneva. Jan Krugier became his main representative, along with Di Meo, who exhibited his work for the first time in his Paris gallery in 1990. Haas's work was consecrated by a retrospective at the Musée Maillol in 1998. In 2013, the Musée du Dessin et de l'Estampe Originale in Gravelines presented an exhibition highlighting Haas's singular relationship with printmaking, seen both as an end in itself and as a raw material. Carborundum engraving gives his works a strong material dimension.

Michel Haas dies in 2019 in Marseille.