Herman de Vries

Herman de Vries is a Dutch artist and one of the internationally crucial figures of European art in the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Alkmaar, Holland (1931), since 1954 he has worked in mobiles, collage, monochromes, assuming an important role from the beginning in the Dutch nul group and the international Zero movement, also through intense activities as a writer and experimental editor, as in the case of the integration of his magazine. Since his debut in the international Zero movement in the 1950s and 1960s, de Vries has constantly worked on an idea of essential, elemental, compositional and operative expression, trying to recreate the fundamental mechanisms of life through artistic action. In his work marked over the decades by an extraordinarily inventive range of material and linguistic solutions and experiments, art, science and philosophy constantly relate to each other and to the reality of the world.

He categorizes his paintings as ‘informal’. Without figuration or color, the paintings are his first steps towards randomness as a principle of order. This principle aims to achieve absolute objectivity, and has played a central role throughout his artistic career. Currently, his art focuses on the disrupted relationship between humanity and nature. In 2015, herman de vries exhibited his work at the LVI Venice Biennale (exhibition curated by Cees de Boer e Colin Huizing) and impressed the jury who selected him in first place.

He usually styles his name in lowercase as herman de vries in his artwork ‘to avoid hierarchy’. de vries works and lives with his wife Susanne in Eschenau, near Knetzgau, Germany.