Howard Edwin Hack, painter, printmaker, draftsman, and sculptor, was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming on 6 July 1932. He was raised in Oakland, California and his career began as a teenager in the late 1940s when he exhibited his paintings at popular venues such as the Vesuvio Cafe and the Coffee Gallery in San Francisco’s North Beach. Hack established himself among the North Beach artists and the greater Bay Area Figurative movement.

In the summer of 1949, Hack studied with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at Mills College. Between the years 1950 and 1953, he studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and independently with Martin Baer, learning Flemish oil painting techniques.

Hack was drafted in 1953 and sent to Korea to be employed as a truck driver and clerk-typist. When he returned to the United States, he occupied a studio space in the Spreckels Mansion in San Francisco, known as the Ghost House. Other artists with studios in the mansion were Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, and Hayward King. Hack participated in his first exhibition in 1955 at the Oakland Art Museum's Western Painters Annual.

Hack lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico between 1957 and 1959, where he further developed his painting style. His paintings focused on Mexican culture and daily life, as well as religious subjects. Returning to the U.S., Hack enrolled at the University of San Francisco and, on the advice of North Beach luminary Lawrence Ferlinghetti, he rented studio space in the Audiffred Building in San Francisco with fellow artists Frank Lobdell, Hassell Smith, and Sonia Getchoff. In 1962 he received a B.A. in philosophy, with a focus on Kantian concepts of symbolism, which he later incorporated into his work. Among his most notable works was a the "Blue Print" series, featuring images that incorporated symbols printed in blue ink on paper, appearing similar to solar prints. He was represented on the West Coast by Gump's and the John Bolles Gallery; and on the East Coast by Lee Nordness Gallery, New York.

Solo exhibitions of Hack’s work were mounted at the Bolles Gallery and the Gump’s Gallery in San Francisco; the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Mills College Art Gallery, and the art gallery of the California State University, Chico. His work is held in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Oakland Museum of California; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Howard Edwin Hack died in Oakland, California on June 11, 2015.