An original ceramic vessel with an erotic theme by Roger Herman, signed and dated RH 97. Rim of vase is intentionally 'chipped' aka deconstructed. This piece is believed to be important as it is one of his earliest ceramic works, prior to this Roger Herman specialized in large format paintings.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Roger Herman, originally from Germany, is a renowned artist celebrated for his diverse artistic expressions across various mediums.

Born in 1947 in Germany, Herman commenced his artistic journey at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe. His career took a significant turn in 1976 when he received a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), leading him to San Francisco and eventually to California, where his artistic endeavors began to flourish.

Herman initially gained recognition for his large-scale paintings, which drew parallels to the Neo-expressionist movement of the 1980s on the West Coast. His works are deeply rooted in art history yet infused with his distinctive humor, characterized by loose and expressive brushwork reminiscent of influential German painters like Markus Lüpertz and Georg Baselitz.

His dynamic approach to painting caught the attention of Gagosian, who represented him and positioned him alongside prominent artists such as David Salle and Jean-Michel Basquiat in the California art scene.

In the mid-eighties, Herman was offered a position in the art department of UCLA where he continues to teach and explore a broad range of styles. ‘It is about painting, not about subject matter. I don’t have a narrative,’ Herman says about his work. ‘The subject is always painting, which is why there is a repetition always— like Morandi. I’m trying to go somewhere I’m not comfortable.’

In 1998, Herman embarked on a new artistic exploration inspired by his student's influence, transitioning to ceramics. Despite this shift in medium, his painterly origins are evident in his approach to pottery, treating each piece as a canvas for meticulous brushwork. This fusion of painterly techniques with the tactile nature of clay became integral to his artistic evolution.

Herman's work has been exhibited extensively across the United States and Europe, including notable solo exhibitions at venues such as George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, Ace Contemporary Exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York, Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Museo del Arte Contemporana in Mexico City, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In the last thirty years, Herman has contributed to the rise of several West Coast artists, who today pay their respects to him. Artist Cyril Kuhn says, ‘Every painter in the last 30 years who has come out of Los Angeles owes a debt to him.’

Currently based in Los Angeles, Roger Herman continues to innovate and inspire through his ongoing artistic pursuits. He has also made significant contributions to the art community through his teaching at UCLA and his role in fostering young artists at the Black Dragon Society gallery in Chinatown. In 2010, Herman curated the 'Los Angeles Museum of Ceramic Art' at ACME gallery, showcasing unconventional ceramics, including his own distinctive pieces adorned with nudes in erotic poses.

Howard Singerman (Art Historian) wrote an article about Roger Herman in December 1982 in ArtForum Magazine:

"Ocean, 1979, makes clear Roger Herman’s problem as a painter and summarizes something of the condition of current painting. This large, brooding diptych is fashioned of horizontal green, gray, and black sweeps capped with ridges of stark white. Ocean is ostensibly painting in the wild, an attempt to match the power of its subject with the immediacy of paint; but the painting is inscribed in the upper right with the names of Albert Pinkham Ryder and Marsden Hartley, and Herman’s ocean view is a genre painting, a seascape. Herman’s expressionistic style, too, with its roots in German Expressionism and the New York School, is previously painted. His mean colors, thick pigment, and quick strokes are not a direct record of emotion and activity; they are not painting outside language, but signs for that painting, for an emotion and an activity that are no longer available. The expressionist act is recast as romantic aspiration; in his inscription, Herman evokes painting’s past and admits his need for its aura.

The past hangs heavily over the exhibition’s more recent work, too, but now Herman’s citings are more pointed and his past a more obviously represented and ironic one. A small painting of Jean Paul Marat, La Crie du Peuple, one of the exhibition’s two best paintings, recalls David’s painting of The Death of Marat, and carries the revolutionary’s name in a lower corner. But Herman’s Marat faces in the opposite direction from David’s; David isn’t his model. Instead, the scene is taken from Abel Gance’s Napoleon, and Antonin Artaud, who acted in the film and whose name is written in the opposite corner of the painting, appears as Marat. The painting is pantingly romantic, with the artist (Artaud) cast as the revolutionary killed by his own madness. Indian’s subject, a painted “red” Indian, is, like Marat, an image of freedom from the bonds of a tired culture. But a splintery woodcut of the same Indian, from a group of four prints that comprise the exhibition’s most effective work (perhaps because they aren’t paintings), is dedicated to Karl May, a German mythologist of the American West. Herman’s Indian, like his revolutionary and his ocean, has always been metaphor."

AWARDS:

DAAD Grant from Germany National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant

MEASUREMENTS:

H 9.5" x W 9.25" x D 9.25"

CONDITION:

Excellent condition, ready for immediate use. Light age and patina. Rim is intentionally deconstructed as seen on many other examples of his ceramic vessels.