String Quartet

Hildegarde Haas

Hildegarde Haas had a condition called "synesthesia" (sometimes called "visual thinking") which allowed her to visualize music she heard into colors and shapes and she would work while listening to music. Most of her work relates to the immediate colors and rhythm she responded to while working on the composition.

This Modernist, cubist-like composition is done using oil paint on Masonite. The String Quartet has the feeling of a stained glass window, the light seems to emanate from behind, as the flattened figures of the musicians are held in tension by the diagonal black lines, capturing a momentary pause, just before the whole scene changes again.

Haas was a member of The Printmakers, an established group of New York graphic artists whose ranks included Ross Abrams, Seong Moy, William Rose, Peter Kahn, Ruben Reif, Jim Forsberg, Wolf Kahn, Dorothy Morton, and Aaron Kurzen.

Her woodcuts, which lean toward rhythmic and calligraphic abstraction, were included in the exhibition "Young American Printmakers" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1953.