Untitled, from Albert Einstein - Zitate aus Mein Weltbild - Sieben Radierungen von Terry Haass (Albert Einstein - Excerpts from "Ideas and Opinions" - Translations from "Mein Weltbild - Seven Etchings by Terry Haass)

Terry Haass

In his catalogue raisonné on Haass, Peter Spielmann wrote: Furthermore, for Terry Haass the light is a presence of nature. By means of the light the human being realized the interelations [sic] between nature and himself. Terry Haass herself finds the light in nature. If we think of her experiences in the Northern countries, she also brings things which have been hidden in the dark for years, into the light. This was the work of the archaeologist. Elucidating the objects she at the same time transfers them from the past into the present. Thus it is no wonder that she had developed a very close relation to the philosophy and discoveries of Einstein. She doesn’t want to illustrate his theories but tries to find an artistic expression for the problems and solutions Einstein confronts us with. She focuses on the relationship between space, matter and light….In her view our problems are a questions of philosophy and of commitment to humanity; an attitude for which she admires Einstein. In her works the interelations [sic] between perceptions and formal expression intertwine. This has to do with the dimensions of time.

Terry Haass (nee Terezie Goldmannová), printmaker, painter, designer, and sculptor, was born in Cesky Tesin, Czechoslovakia on 17 November 1923. She with her mother and half-brother fled Czechoslovakia in 1938 due to the rise of anti-Semitism and, by way of Switzerland, found their way to France. In Paris, she studied fashion and art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière until she was once again displaced by war. In 1941, the family moved to the south of France and then were smuggled to Portugal where they were able to book passage to New York. They settled in the upper west side of Manhattan where she met and soon married Walter Haass, a German refugee.

Terry Haass received a scholarship to the Art Students’ League where she studied printmaking with Will Barnet and Harry Sternberg. She began working at Stanley William Hayter’s experimental workshop, Atelier 17, in 1947. Haass co-directed the workshop with artist Harry Hoehn in the spring and summer of 1951 when Hayter returned to Paris.

In 1951, Haass received a Harriet Hale Wooley scholarship to study color printmaking with Roger Lacourière in Paris where she also attended classes in Mesopotamian archeology at the École du Louvre. Over many years she participated in archaeological digs in the Middle East. A Fulbright Travel Grant allowed Haass to travel Norway where she was captivated by the light, the wind, and the water-swept rocks of the utmost islands in the fjord. She moved to Paris and became a French citizen in 1963. In the 1960s, her work was greatly influenced by Einstein’s theories of time and space and she incorporated these ideas into her sculpture.

Her work is represented in countless public collections including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Library of Congress and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. There is a large collection of her works in the Muzeum Umeni, Olomouc, Czech Republic. In 2006, this museum organized an extensive retrospective of Haass’ graphic work, paintings, sculptures, and costume designs entitled Light - Space - Time. The exhibition offered a profile of her work from the 1940s onward.

Terry Haass died in Paris on March 1, 2016.