Hilaire Hiler

Hilaire Hiler
Born	Hiler Harzberg 1898 St. Paul, Minnesota
Died	1966
Nationality	American
Known for	Painter
Movement	Modernism, Structuralism

Hilaire Hiler (1898-1966) was an American artist, psychologist, and color theoretician who worked in Europe and United States during the mid-20th century. At home and abroad, Hiler worked as a muralist, jazz musician, costume and set designer, teacher, and author. He was best known for combining his artistic and psychoanalytical training to formulate an original perspective on color.

Hilaire Hiler was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1898, and he grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. Possessing both great height and a flamboyant personality, as well as a stammer and large ears, Hiler was a distinctive and charming character who felt at home anywhere.

Hiler attended a number of schools as a young man, including Rhode Island School of Design classes for children, and a brief attendance at Wharton School of Finance and Commerce to appease his father. Although he was told by multiple instructors to give up art based on his struggles with drawing, he pursued his interests by attending Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, University of Pennsylvania, University of Denver, University of Paris, and Golden State University.

As an expatriate living in Paris in the 1920s, Hiler became friends with the literary crowd of Henry Miller, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and Anaïs Nin. Miller referred to the man as "a hilarious painter whom I always think of with hilarious glee." Hiler had broad academic, artistic, and social interests; he occupied himself painting interior murals, performing jazz piano at nightclubs—often with his pet monkey, studying remote cultures, writing books and magazine articles, designing theater costumes and sets, and carousing with his friends. He left Paris in 1934, but not before seeing a therapist to improve his speech and undergoing surgery to make his ears less prominent.

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