Aad de Haas - (1920-1972)

Very beautiful framed linocut by Aad de Haas
With blind stamp Nel de Haas. Paper is not discolored in new condition.

Title: Interior II.
Can be picked up, shipping is also possible.
About the artist: Adrianus Johannes (Aad) de Haas (Rotterdam, December 30, 1920 - Schaesberg, March 21, 1972), was a Dutch sculptor, graphic artist and painter, whose work is usually characterized as figurative expressionist.

Lifecycle He grew up in a Catholic environment and, after secondary education, studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Visual Arts.
De Haas experienced the bombing of Rotterdam. His work was labeled as 'entartet' by the occupying forces and he ended up in prison. In 1944 he managed to flee to South Limburg with his wife Nel, where he would live the rest of his life and work as a passionate and socially involved artist. From 1952 he lived in Strijthagen Castle in Schaesberg.
In the years after the Second World War he played a unique role in the Limburg art climate. He firmly rejected trend-sensitive developments and continued to work in a very special and personal oeuvre in a figurative, expressionist tradition. For De Haas, this stubbornness was not a stylistic matter. He is characterized by an absolute fusion of his life and work and by an unremitting production: he had no choice but to make 'beautiful things', entirely for his 'own fun'. De Haas was always a bit contradictory in his attitude to work and life; activism and autonomy went hand in hand for him.
Aad de Haas died in 1972 at the age of 51 and left behind a large oeuvre of works in different techniques and styles, which clearly reflect his unique visual language and the universal themes important to him. Religion, suffering, power, resistance, seduction and eroticism are recurring themes in his work, which are often interwoven with experiences from his personal life. De Haas's work holds up a mirror to society, as it were: his art expresses a conscience.
De Haas' name is mainly linked to the conflict over his murals in the Sint Cunibertus Church in Wahlwiller. Church resistance grew against these Stations of the Cross, which he completed in 1947, and they eventually had to be removed by order of the Diocese of Roermond, under the episcopate of Bishop Guillaume Lemmens. They were only able to return in 1981, with the help of Bishop Jo Gijsen. In 1996, Bishop Frans Wiertz apologized on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and De Haas was posthumously rehabilitated.
In 1949, De Haas was awarded the Prize of the Artists' Resistance Foundation by the Artists' Resistance Foundation 1942-1945. The City Gallery Heerlen purchased part of De Haas's artistic legacy from the heirs in 1994/1995. This acquisition included more than 250 works (paintings, drawings, monotypes and graphics). Nowadays, the grand Aad de Haas collection is brought together in the municipal collection SCHUNCK (Heerlen). Furthermore, the artist's work is included in Dutch museum and private collections.