Michael Hafftka is an American figurative

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

painter living in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. His work is represented in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

New York Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The museum was originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was formerly located ...

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

McNay Art Museum The McNay Art Museum, founded in 1954 in San Antonio, is the first modern art museum in Texas. The museum was created by Marion Koogler McNay's original bequest of most of her fortune, her important art collection and her 24-room Spanish Coloni ...

Housatonic Museum of Art The Housatonic Museum of Art is a museum at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The museum's collection is displayed throughout the college campus and in the Burt Chernow Galleries, which also hosts visiting exhibitions. C ...

, Arizona State University Art Museum,

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, and

Yeshiva University Museum The Yeshiva University Museum is a teaching museum and the cultural arm of Yeshiva University. Along with the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, and the YIVO Institute for Jew ...

. Hafftka was born in Manhattan (1953) to Eva and Simon Hafftka, European refugees and

Holocaust survivors Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universall ...

. He was raised in the Bronx and attended public schools. Hafftka designed covers for Urizen Books, including ''Detour'', ''Wedding Feast'' and ''Circuits'', by

Michael Brodsky Michael Mark Brodsky (born Aug 2, 1948) is a scientific/medical editor, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels '' Xman'' and '' ***'', as well as for his translation of Samuel Beckett's '' Eleuthéria''. ...

. Kevin Begos of Guignol Books published Hafftka's drawings in 1982. His first one-person show was at Art Galaxy. Among the New York galleries that subsequently have featured his work are: the Rosa Esman Gallery, the Aberbach Gallery, the Mary Ryan Gallery, and the DiLaurenti Gallery. He has also exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. The

mounted a retrospective in October 2004.

at the

Center for Jewish History The Center for Jewish History is a partnership of five Jewish history, scholarship, and art organizations in New York City, namely the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute New York, Yeshiva Univ ...

in New York held a solo exhibition ''I of the Storm'', a major show of recent works, March through August 2009.

Illustrated Books

* ''Conscious/Unconscious'', short stories and drawings by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press 2007, * ''In the Penal Colony'', a short story by

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

illustrated by Michael Hafftka, Limited Editions Club 1987,

ASIN Asin Thottumkal (born 26 October 1985), known mononyomusly as Asin, is an Indian former actress who appeared predominantly in Tamil cinema, Tamil, Hindi and Telugu language, Telugu films. Asin is a recipient of List of awards and nominations ...

B003Y7OW8W * ''The Terror of Loch Ness'', a novel by Che Elias, illustrated by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press 2007, * ''Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors'', poems by Peter Klappert with art by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press 2008, * ''To Die Next To You'', poems by

Rodger Kamenetz Rodger Kamenetz (born 1950) is an American poet and author best known for ''The Jew in the Lotus'' (1994), an account of the historic dialogue between rabbis and the XIV Dalai Lama. His poetry explores the Jewish experience and in recent years, ...

with art by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press, 2013,

Digital Publications

* ''My Declaration of Independence and how I see it as an artist in a decentralized ecosystem'', a blog post by Michael Hafftka, January 24th, 2023 * ''Hafftka Computer Paintings 1996-98'', a blog post by Michael Hafftka, March 1st, 2023

References

External links

Official website@hafftka on Twitterhafftka on Instagram
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hafftka, Michael 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists 1953 births Living people 20th-century American Jews DeWitt Clinton High School alumni Jewish American painters 20th-century American printmakers Painters from New York (state) 21st-century American Jews 20th-century American male artists Neo-expressionist artists

Illustrated Books

Digital Publications

References

Further reading

External links