Roger Herman Vases and Vessels

Roger Herman, a German painter and ceramic artist, has become well known for the broad range of styles encompassed within his work across multiple mediums. Roger Herman was born in Germany in 1947, where he began his studies at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe. In 1976, he was offered a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service, which took him across the world to San Francisco. It was here, in California, that his career began to flourish. He started by creating paintings of phenomenal proportions, soon christened as the West Coast parallel of the 80s Neo-expressionist movement. It was highly referential work, drawing on his knowledge of art history, as well as his famed sense of humor. With loose, facile brushwork, his art is reminiscent of the figurative German painters who emerged in the 1970s, like, Markus Lüpertz, Rainer Fetting, Dieter Hacker, Georg Baselitz and K. H. Hödicke. His work gaining international renown, he was asked in the 80s to teach in the art department of UCLA. He accepted and over three decades transformed the department into one of the most in-demand in the United States. In this position, he contributed to the rise of several West Coast artists. According to Cyril Kuhn, “Every painter in the last 30 years who has come out of Los Angeles owes a debt to him." It wasn’t until 1998, more than two decades as a painter, that Herman rethought the direction of his work. Taking lessons from one of his students, he began to work in clay. While his medium may have changed, however, his painterly beginnings remain apparent in his approach, treating each pot as a blank canvas on which he layers careful brush strokes. Herman found freedom in the combination of a painter’s technique and clay medium, a juxtaposition that became fundamental to his development. Herman has shown widely in the United States and Europe. Solo exhibitions include George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, Ace Contemporary Exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York, Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Roger Herman currently resides in Los Angeles, where he continues his work.