Herman Hebler

21st of August 2007 Herman Hebler died at Fredrikstad, Norway, where he was born, where he lived and worked.

Herman Hebler was an extraordinary personality in modern art in Norway and Europe. His paintings and prints are estimated all over the world, because Herman Hebler can stand in for them with a consequent strong conviction. He had got a lot of prizes and grants, so 1998 “Grand Prix d`Honneur” of the International Print- Triennial of Cracow and the Grand Prix of the Triennial of Cairo.

Herman Hebler was member of more than 30 international prize-juries; he showed his prints in 190 international biennials and triennials. There is no other artist who participated in so many exhibitions all over the world. And he didn’t stop working. His last exhibition with new works was in spring in his studio.

The oeuvre of Herman Hebler is an unmistakable current in the stream of  different stylistic tendencies in the second half of the last century - early works of the time of studies and later on proof that the artist was able to work in all directions: realism, expressionism, abstraction. But only the last had his interest: geometrical abstraction.
Gentulio Alviani, the Italian artist, wrote in the jubilee catalogue 2001:"Since Herman Hebler started, investigating and working in the precise arts in 1963 he has developed  his works through maximum synthesis becoming progressively ever more explicit and clear in his formulations and resolutions."
In consequence of this remark it is obvious, that the work of Herman Hebler has got a secured position in modern art history. It has its own character when using geometrical forms and it offers surprises even in the developing elements.
Besides in Norway Herman Hebler studied also at the Folkwang-School at Essen, Germany (1937 – 1939). Here he considered for the first time the forms of the human being in consequent simplification. Most of these early works were burnt in a fire at his atelier in 1968.
About 1963 Herman Hebler began to compose structural systems in diagonal or vertical directions. All mystical impressions were avoided. He followed the maxim of the pure constructivism. Nothing on the surface of the picture means more than it is (Wladyslaw Strzeminski). Herman Hebler participated in the movement of constructivism, which based on the radical reductions of the Malevich - revolution and the bold simplifications of the Mondrian- abstractions. But he was no longer confronted with their questions.
From the beginning Herman Hebler had worked in sequences. That means one motif is subject to a few colour -compositions which are on the same level. Prints and pictures were produced in two fundamental aspects: static and calm or dynamic on the other hand. In the first case the squares and rectangular stripes dominate, in the other case the diagonals will be stressed in horizontal compositions. Such forms give the composition not only dynamic, but also rhythm and life.
Herman Hebler's choice of colours was very special: The balance between them was always the balance of the forms. The colours could change their positions and could take the counter-point, but without losing the balance.

 And he used black as a colour: In the whole oeuvre black is the constant factor. A group of drawings which were created between 1978 and 1982 were milestones in the perception of black as colour. The artist had separated black in several forms of density. White was the main surprise in these drawings. It was already there, It didn't receive attention but black made it visible. The drawings were like an interruption in the development of  paintings and prints.

In the years after 1982 Hebler continued his work in series in painting and silkscreen. In the nineties a single big form with an irregular outline is dominating. It leads to new monumental forms without the character of dialog. After them the short time of columns and installations began. May be that Herman Hebler has found 3-dimensional forms in a big step from a picture to a column. But then he worked out all possibilities between them. That means, that Herman Hebler made experiments with all materials, he was curious to all what will happen. Some 3-dimensional works have directly ideas of architecture.

In art Herman Hebler was emotional and subjective and at the beginning of a work even spontaneous, but after this stringent and perfect. This makes his work unique - even in the new century to which it has built amazing bridges.

Herman Hebler was a knot in an international network of artists and organizers of the most important print exhibitions. It started in1968 at the biennial at Cracow, where he came in contact to a lot of printmakers and representatives of several other art scenes. Here the idea of the biennial in Fredrikstad was born.

The international Norwegian Print Biennial was opened in 1972. The last was in 1999 in the new founded Herman Hebler- Centre where it could not be continued because of economic causes.

This biennial, since 1989 continued as triennial, was the leading international exhibition in Scandinavia. It had its own character. This was possible because Herman Hebler could offer a clear opinion, an unique work. In many sessions of juries he was a well considered guest, because he was convincing in his opinion which was free of animosities and prejudice. This was also a condition of his biennial in Fredrikstad, whereto Herman and Ulla Hebler invited the artists. It is to owe both that the biennial was a window to all art in the world, especially to artists from the young states in Asia and Africa. For Herman and Ulla Hebler there was no ranking of artists who participated the biennial. Both have seen and felt the development of the 21st century - and on the field of print art they have even prepared it - that the centers of Europe and North-America are confronted with new centres as the Arabian World, India, China.

Jürgen Weichardt