GREENWICH, CT – On June 23, the Bruce Museum in Greenwich opens Expressionism in Print: The Early Works of Richard Haas, 1957 - 64 in the Arcade Gallery. The exhibition will be on display through October 21, 2018.
Richard Haas’s expansive oeuvre is predominantly marked by trompe l'oeil murals and detailed renderings of New York City’s architecture. But before he began recording urban landscapes, Haas sought inspiration from German Expressionist printmakers and Abstract Expressionist painters.
Included in the exhibition are prints produced from 1957 to 1964—a seven-year period that, in many ways, encapsulates the artist’s graphic evolution.
“Richard Haas’s early figural woodcuts are a departure from his now more familiar images of the urban landscape,” says Peter C. Sutton, The Susan E. Lynch Executive Director. “This show centers on the expressiveness of the human form and will come as a revelation to some of his many admirers.”
While attending the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a city heavily settled by German immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, Haas began studying German Expressionism. Informed by the emotive woodcuts of Max Beckmann and Erich Heckel, Haas’s large-scale prints include abstract portraits of European artists and great thinkers. He later enrolled in a summer course with Jack Tworkov—a New York School artist painting in an Abstract Expressionist mode. In the years following, Haas produced etchings and monotypesindicative of Tworkov’s gestural abstraction.
Expressionism in Print: The Early Works of Richard Haas, 1957-64 will be accompanied by a catalogue authored by Elizabeth Smith, Zvi Grunberg Fellow 2017-18. Exhibitions at the Bruce Museum are supported by the Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund and the Connecticut Office of the Arts.
About the Bruce Museum
The Bruce Museum is located in a park setting just off I-95, exit 3, at 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich, Connecticut. The Museum is also a 5-minute walk from the Metro-North Greenwich Station. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm; closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students with ID, and free for members and children less than five years. Individual admission is free on Tuesday. Free on-site parking is available and the Museum is accessible to individuals with disabilities. For additional information, call the Bruce Museum at 203-869-0376 or visit brucemuseum.org.