Michael Hafftka (1953 - ) is an American figurative expressionist painter living in New York City. Hafftka was born in Manhattan to Eva and Simon Hafftka, European refugees and Holocaust survivors. Raised in the Bronx, he attended public schools and experimented with several creative forms before he discovered painting when he was 20. In the wake of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Hafftka volunteered to work for a year on a Kibbutz in Israel. The "momentous change brought on a series of visionary experiences and mystical dreams", and when writing "proved an inadequate outlet of expression," Hafftka began to paint—an experience that proved "revelatory and self defining."
Back in New York, Hafftka worked as an artist while supporting himself with odd jobs. A voracious and broad reader and a frequent visitor to local museums, the artist discovered an affinity for Old Masters, such as Rembrandt and Goya, as well as for 20th-century artists, such as Giacometti and Bacon. Hafftka's interest in the graphic arts led him to design a number of covers for Urizen Books. Several publications on the artist were followed by his first one-person show at Art Galaxy. Among the New York galleries that subsequently have featured his work are: the Rosa Esman Gallery, the Aberbach Gallery, the Mary Ryan Gallery, and the DiLaurenti Gallery. He has also exhibited widely in the United States and abroad.
Hafftka's work is represented in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, Housatonic Museum of Art, Arizona State University Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and Yeshiva University Museum.
Housatonic Museum Of Art in Bridgeport, CT, mounted the show A Retrospective: Large Oils 1985-2003, October 2004, with a A 72-page catalogue containing 23 color plates. The catalogue includes essays by Prof. Sam Hunter and Michael Brodsky. Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History in New York held a solo exhibition I of the Storm, a major show of recent works, March 22 through August 30, 2009.