Terry Haass

Chzechoslovakian 1923-

Considered one of the most outstanding of modern printmakers, Terry Haass’ etchings are admired for their complexity in design and execution. Her use of colour is notably radiant, yet subtle when necessary, the images largely abstract while containing a hint of a link with reality, a “spiritual sense of time and space.”

Of Jewish parentage, Terry Haass fled her Nazi-invaded homeland in 1939 and was just sixteen when she began studying art in Paris. An Art Student League scholarship in 1941 took her to New York where, from 1947 she worked with founder Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17, eventually taking over as director.

Returning to Paris to study intaglio printing, Haass then travelled to Norway, the inspiration for her “Cycle Nordique” series printed in the early ‘50s. Also a student of archaeology, Haass participated in digs in Mesopotamia, inspiring other great works, including “Inanna.”

An exhibition, “Homage to Albert Einstein,” travelled extensively throughout Europe in the 1970s. Terry Haass has been the subject of a huge retrospective at the Bochum Museum in germany. Her work is on permanent display in Creative Spaces: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop at the International Print Center, New York.