Richard Haas

Richard John Haas is an American muralist who is best known for architectural murals and his use of the trompe-l'œil style. His murals have been commissioned for interiors and exteriors of numerous public and private buildings in the United States. In 1975 Haas painted his first outside mural, a trompe l'oeil version of a cast iron facade on a blank brick side wall of a building at 112 Prince Street. Since then, he has been exploring the intersection of art and architecture through a series of illusionistic murals. By marrying the painted architecture as closely as possible to the existing architecture, he endeavors to make the encounter with the painting as "plausible" as possible, to make one feel that it belongs where it is, that it was always part of the natural cityscape. Called "an architect in all but name" and a "building doctor" by Paul Goldberger in the NY Times, he has won the Doris C. Freedman Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the AIA Medal of Honor. His work has been the subject of several books, countless exhibitions, and a film.