Swiss sculptor considered one of the founders of modern sculpture in his country. In the 1920s Haller was one of the most famous sculptors in the German-speaking world. Together with Cuno Amiet, he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1934.
He first studied architecture in Stuttgart then in 1901 enrolled in the painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He made friends with a classmate from Bern, Paul Klee, and the pair travelled through Italy from October 1901 to May 1902.
From 1901 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart where he befriended the painter Karl Hofer. The Winterthur patron Theodor Reinhart enabled Haller, and Hofer, to spend an extended period in Rome at the Villa Strohl-Fern, where Haller turned to sculpture.
From 1909 until the outbreak of the First World War he lived with his family in Paris, where his brother-in-law, the painter Otto von Wätjen, and his wife Marie Laurencin, introduced them to the circle of artists in the Café du Dôme where he became friends with Ernesto de Fiori and Rudolf Levy.
In 1914 he returned to Switzerland and worked in Zurich as a successful figure sculptor, and making friends with sculptor Hermann Hubacher.
From 1919 he was in a new relationship with his student, the sculptor Hedwig Braus, whom he married in April 1945. Between 1921 and 1923 Braus and Haller went on various study trips together, spending the winter months in Berlin, first with the art dealer Paul Cassirer, then with Fritz Huf in whose studio he worked, as well as to Paris and Italy.
Hermann Haller died on 23 November 1950 in Zurich at age 69.
Link to Wikipedia biography