from earth: south america

Herman de Vries is a Dutch artist and one of the internationally crucial figures of European art in the second half of the 20th century. Born in Alkmaar, Holland (1931), since 1954 he has worked on mobiles, collage, monochromes, assuming an important role early on in the Dutch group nul and the international movement zero, also through intense activities as a writer and experimental publisher, as in the case of his magazine integration. Since his debut in the international movement zero, in the 1950s and 1960s, de vries has constantly worked on an idea of essential, elementary compositional and operative expression, trying to recreate the fundamental mechanisms of life through the artistic action. In his work marked across the decades by an extraordinarily inventive range of solutions and materic and linguistic experiments, art, science and philosophy are constantly put into relation with each other and the reality of the world. 

He categorises his paintings as 'informal'. Using no figuration or colour, the paintings are his first steps towards randomness as a principle of the order. This principle aims to achieve absolute objectivity, and has had a central role throughout his artistic career. Currently, his art focuses on the disrupted relation between humanity and nature. In 2015, herman de vries exhibited his work at the LVI Biennale of Venice (exhibition curated by Cees de Boer e Colin Huizing) and impressed the jury that selected him in the first place.

He typically stylises his name in lower-case as herman de vries on his artwork 'to avoid hierarchy'. de vries works and lives with his wife Susanne in Eschenau near Knetzgau, Germany.