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ERIK HERMAN, ARTIST, 08/03/1928 - 20/09/2014, DENMARK

‘I merely begin to tell a story, so the viewer can build, develop and continue the tale to fit with their own circumstances and desires’.

Erik Herman was born in 1928 in the provincial small Danish town of Randers. As a young boy he was playing in the meadows along the longest Danish river, Gudenaaen, where he started to draw and paint water colours of the rich plant and animal life. In those meadows he met the Danish Biologist, Hjalmar Ussing, who introduced him into the world of micro biology and who taught him to ‘see’. After this encounter, at the early age of 12, he was soon illustrating biologists articles for a series of specialist magazines. Danish artist Svend Dalsgaard who lived in Erik's Herman’s neighbourhood, took him under his wings and helped to get his art admitted at the Danish ‘Royal Academy of Arts’. As World War II cast it's shadows and Denmark was an occupied nation, Erik spent his teens suppressing his artistic abilities, as life was restricted and made difficult during the Nazi occupation. Instead he got involved with the resistance movement.

In 1947 Erik managed to arrange his first separate exhibition in his hometown. He was 19 and a fresh college graduate. He was longing to travel and managed a trip to the Art Centre of Paris, where he spent a year at art school before the money ran out and he had to return home. 'He was later awarded a grant, enabling travels to Valery and Aix en Provence, where me met the great Picasso. In Nice, Erik met Chagall. This was a meeting, which made a deep impression on the young Danish artist and he later commented: ‘All of a sudden I understood how symbolic colours and metaphors unite in all great art’.

Back in Denmark he had several exhibitions and for a while, he was captivated by the 3-dimensional features of clay and a number of large clay mosaics were commissioned by several Danish Businesses.! For a period, it was mainly graphic illustration and drawing that was occupying his interest and this resulted in a large number of book illustrations. He said, ‘We had to eat, the fifties and sixties were not the best years for art in Denmark’. By then he had a family and food had to be on the table every day.

A new source of inspiration appeared in Narvik, in the north of Norway. They needed an artistic leader of a cultural development programme for the region. The combination of the fantastic and grand Norwegian nature and working with the "Sami" nomadic people and their colourful identity and culture was his latest catalyst. ‘The Peoples House’ in Narvik commissioned a complete exhibition of 20 paintings to decorate their walls. In Trondheim, he took up a teaching post at the University - and at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer he was represented in the Cultural exhibition with no less than 12 paintings. During Erik Herman's 15 years of teaching art students and being involved in artistic regional development in Norway, he was a frequent speaker at seminars and lectures as a visiting professor, including countries like Scotland, Canada, France, Sweden and Finland. Retired from teaching, Erik, was back in Odense in Denmark, where he painted more than ever, with tons of enthusiasm, greater motivation and excitement, his latest paintings are rich, even more colourful and with lots of vigour.