I was born on Riverside Drive in Manhattan in 1953. Shortly after I was four years old, my family moved to the Marble Hill section of the Bronx. My father, Simon Hafftka, and mother, Eva Hershko, were both refugees from Europe and survivors of the Holocaust. My father and his cousin Alexander Hafftka were the only survivors of a large family whose great uncle was Dr. Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine. Much of my understanding of the world came from my perception of my parents’ wartime experiences. Among the host of determining factors and experiences that were later brought to bear on my becoming an artist was a strong desire for freedom.
I went to public school and Yeshiva for a short time and graduated from De Witt Clinton High school in 1971. At the time of my graduation, I already knew I was an artist though I had not accomplished anything tangible and still had not found my medium.
My mother died in 1971, and I went to Budapest (on the earnings I made working in a bike shop and as a sales clerk in an Army & Navy store) to meet my maternal grandmother whom I had just discovered was still alive. My grandmother didn’t speak Modern English; she spoke to me in the English she learned, which was Shakespearean. It was linguistically a funny and poetic experience. On the way back from Budapest, I went to Barcelona and lived like a hobo for several months. I was deeply moved by all the art and architecture I saw. The buildings of Gaudi especially struck me.

I did not want to go to Vietnam. I had been turned down as a Conscientious Objector, but being number 13 in the draft lottery, I was sure I would be drafted. Luckily the draft ended the year I could be called. When the draft ended, I came back to the United States. In New York, I often went to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I made money peddling jewelry in front of Bloomingdale’s and peddling my own photographs in front of the Met. I had been also working in a camera shop.

In 1972, I went back to Barcelona for six months. In Barcelona, I wrote poetry and observed a foreign land with a childish freedom that came from not knowing the native language. When I returned to New York, I continued to peddle and in 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out, I decided to volunteer to work on a Kibbutz in Israel. To get the fare, I sold my camera to pay for half of the fare. The Jewish Agency of the State of Israel paid for the other half after I agreed to work for at least one year.


In the center of the kibbutz was a water tower, it was the tallest structure in the area, I made a studio in a room under the water tank. After a year I moved to Hertzelia where I lived in a shack in the middle of an orchard just a short walk away from the Mediterrian Sea. I would arise in the morning, pluck the fruit from a tree, swim and paint day and night.
I decided to move back to New York where I could pursue a career. I did not make a single sale or receive an offer for a show until 1976 when on the suggestion of Ivan Karp of OK Harris; I was invited to show in the artist owned gallery, Rabinowitch and Guerra. For a living i did free lance paste-up mechanical work and truck driving. I was a long way from the orchard.

I met Michael Rolloff, the publisher of Urizen books, and he hired me to do book covers for two of Michael Brodsky’s novels. (Michael Roloff was the translator of Herman Hesse’s Demian, which I had greatly admired for many years). At the publication party for Mr. Brodsky, Kevin Begos approached me and told me he would like to publish a a book of my drawings. "Michael Hafftka Selected Drawings" was published in 1982. He also published the pamphlet "Art of Experience Experience of Art" in 1982. This book was a strong response to what I saw around me in the galleries and to my continual rejection from exhibitions. I was a very angry young man.

Barbara Flynn of Art Galaxy bought the drawing book and offered me my first one-person show. Five of the seven paintings were sold to prominent collectors. They were my first sales. After that, I showed at Rosa Esman Gallery in New York and eventually in galleries in Europe and Japan and throughout the United States. My work was acquired by MOMA and hung for a time, also by the Met, the Carnegie Institute and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I also had a show at Carnegie Mellon with a catalogue essay by John Caldwell, who at the time was the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Carnegie Institute. John Caldwell was a close friend up until his untimely death in 1993.

I continued to paint from my dreams and visions and to paint portraits of my friends (although there was no attempt at creating a visual resemblance). I was after a spiritual realism and I felt I was on the right track toward achieving my desires. All the while, painting for me was in itself a guiding light. Wherever the work led me I would follow. It was in this manner that I began to explore both the subject matter and the substance of paint. By 1987, I had developed a very clear and distinct vision. I began to paint a group of works that culminated in my painting "Ceremony." This group of paintings was shown at DiLaurenti Gallery in Soho. Sam Hunter wrote the catalogue introduction.

In 1989, Aberbach Fine Art began to represent my work.

Jean Aberbach showed my work in a one-person exhibition at the Art Cologne International in 1991. I began to work more directly from life and embraced realism and observation. I was fascinated with using all that I saw on the outside to convey my inner psyche. Regrettably, Mr. Aberbach died in 1992.

In 1993 when I turned 40, I had a strong vision and this culminated in the painting "40 Years." I gave up realism, except for the occasional portraits, to work exclusively from my inner visions. I feel tremendously appreciative that the source of my vision has not dried up. In 2004 The Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport Connecticut gave my work a retrospective of my large oils 1985-2003. Michael Brodsky wrote an introduction to the catalogue in addition to an new essay by Professor Sam Hunter.

© 2005 Michael Hafftka