Excerpt:
...Fantastical Daydreamer, Pregnant Duck or
Motor-Car Guzzler – such titles are typical of
Kurt Haas, the Swiss-German artist, who for three decades
has been producing insistent drawings and eye-catching
acrylics. Haas delights in leading his audience into
territories steeped in vivid colour, into magical gardens
and jubilant cities. One presses forward along pathways
and patterns heavy with ornamentation, as if groping
through a mysterious maze, to engage ever more deeply
with the visual inventions of this master of fantasticality.
In the year 2000, a Kurt Haas show travelled from Basel,
Switzerland, to the French town of Lapalisse and on
to Hauterives, home town of Ferdinand Cheval and his
architectural fantasy, Le Palais Idéal. The Haas show
was the first curated overview of the creative work
of the 67-year-old Swiss artist, and it made very clear
the itinerary which Haas himself has followed as an
autodidact turned artist who, nourished on a variety
of sources, has established a vibrant and striking idiom
of his own.
Happy Night, 2000,
mixed media on cardboard, 50 x 40 cm (left); XORX-012,
1976, acrylic on linen, 46 x 38 cm (right)