Hildegarde Haas (Hildegarde Vogel, Hildegarde Vogel Haas) was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1926. She immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1937, settling in Texas. Her studies in art began in in Colorado at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center where she attended summer classes. She spent two years studying at the University of Chicago and later earned a scholarship to attend the Art Students League in New York where she studied under Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytacil. She taught herself the art of printmaking and became a member of The Printmakers, an established group of New York graphic artists. In 1945, she married Ernst Haas in Chicago and the couple relocated to California in the 1950s where Hildegarde was a member of the San Francisco Art Association, the Art and Crafts Co-op of Berkeley and the Oakland Art Association. Haas experienced a condition known as sound-to-color synesthesia, when she listened to music, the sound involuntarily evoked an experience of color, shape, and movement. She produced a number of abstract paintings known as her Classical Music Series illustrating her response to the music of Beethove, Handel and Bach.