GallerySlideshowBio
Gray Shadow-Series Run
1957
11 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches
Oil on paper
Signed & dated: lower right
Red-and-Green-Complementary
1956
11 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Oil on paper
Signed & dated: lower right
Amazonias-Structure of Green
Oil on masonite
48 x 36 inches
Signed & dated: lower right
Illustrator, painter, muralist. Born in St Paul, MN on July 16, 1898. Hiler was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Denver, Golden State University in Los Angeles, and the Nat’l College in Ontario, Canada. Sailing to France in 1919, he continued at the University of Paris while playing saxophone in a jazz band. During the 1920s he ran the Jockey Club (an artists’ hangout) on the Left Bank. At the club he often played jazz piano with a live monkey on his back. Upon moving to San Francisco in the 1930s, he was commissioned by the WPA to paint murals in the Aquatic Park Bath House (now the Nat’l Maritime Museum). He contributed illustrated maps for the GGIE of 1939 and exhibited at the fair. From San Francisco he moved to Hollywood where he opened a short-lived nightclub on the Sunset Strip. He then lived in Santa Fe (NM), NYC, and in the early 1960s returned to Paris where he remained until his demise on Jan. 19, 1966. A self-taught artist, he was an exponent of modern art and known for his abstracts. In: Museum of NM; NMAA; MOMA; Santa Barbara Museum; LACMA; Luxembourg Museum (Paris); SFMA; Harvard Univ.; Oakland Museum; CPLH. WWAA 1936-66; WWC 1942; Ben; Art of California, Jan. 1982; NY Times, 1-21-1966 (obit); SF Chronicle, 6-14-1987. (askart.com)
