(Paris, 1934 – Marseille, 2019)

Born in 1934 in Paris, Michel Haas studied philosophy, which plays an important role in his work, as well as Renaissance painting, which he studied intensely. His work is also nourished by the many solitary trips he makes to remote parts of the world, where he discovers the primitive arts and the figures of the Paleolithic, freed from any framework. He was marked, at the age of 18, by the discovery of the Lascaux cave.

Michel Haas’ timeless paintings celebrate the simplest of humanity, the beauty of nature and everyday objects. He explores this reflection in the very material of paper, fragile and ephemeral, which he digs and strips to translate a lived experience: passing one day near a freshly turned field, he feels called by the underside of the earth, by its underlying interiority. “Haas alternates violence and gentleness, aggression and caresses, provokes here the hemorrhage, there sutures the wounds, sharpens the brilliance of the charcoal, stifles the flame of the pastels, until the paper, in turn soaked, dried out, tirelessly triturated, scratched, ploughed, bandaged, perforated and reprised again, takes on the resplendent and blind consistency of “basalt and lava”, as Mallarmé used to say (. …)” (Pierre Schneider).

Haas creates only on paper. This treatment of the material is of such importance that he methodically indicates in his archives “technique in paper” rather than “technique on paper”, which would wrongly imply a primacy of the representation over the digging of the material. The simple, immoderate and intimate use of paper, by turns robust and delicate, becomes the white page, both coveted and feared. Without limit of space, virgin plane where float the subjects without gravity, the paper becomes the field of all the possibilities. The figures then seem to struggle against an ineluctable dissolution.

Michel Haas was represented by the Jan Krugier Gallery and had an important exhibition in 1998 at the Maillol Museum. He died in Marseille in 2019. Since 2023, he is represented by the Dina Vierny gallery.