Hermann Haller
Portraitkopf Alfred Flechtheim, 1921

Alfred Flechtheim and Hermann Haller

The Swiss artist Herrmann Haller is one of the most important modern sculptors in the German-speaking world. In 1898 he started studying architecture in Stuttgart but soon switched to painting. One year later he moved to Munich together with his school friend from Bern, Paul Klee, where he studied under Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. After his first stay in Rome in 1901–02, Haller became a master pupil of Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth’s at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. During his second stay in Rome (1903–09) he turned more and more to sculpture to which he devoted his artistic work exclusively from 1905 onwards. His first figurative works were characterised by the influence of Etruscan sculpture that he had studied closely in the collection at Villa Giulia. Haller’s main interest was the female nude. His sometimes life-sized, mostly full-frontal figures exude a calm of their own. He executed his sculptures in a course-grained terracotta and in bronze which are similarly characterised by their rough finish. Haller lived in Paris from 1909–14 where he was one of the circle of artists at the Café du Dôme, to which he was introduced by his brother-in-law, the artist Otto von Wätjen from Düsseldorf. In Germany, Haller was a member of the Sonderbund, exhibited regularly in Berlin from 1910 with the Berlin Secession and was a co-founder of the Freie Sezession. In 1914 he moved to Zurich.

In Germany, Haller was given support by the art dealer Paul Cassirer who organised Haller’s first solo exhibition at the Berlin Salon in 1909, as well as by Alfred Flechtheim. Flechtheim even included sculptures by Haller in the inaugural exhibition of his Düsseldorf gallery in 1913. In the following year Haller was represented in the ‘Dôme’ exhibition and another group exhibition, also in Düsseldorf. His works were regularly exhibited in Flechtheim’s gallery in Berlin in the 1920s and illustrated in Flechtheim’s magazine ‘Der Querschnitt’. Haller’s œuvre includes portaited heads of artists, intellectuals and major figures in the art world, including terracotta sculptures of Alfred Flechtheim himself and his wife, Betty.