Herman de Vries
Herman de Vries (born 11 July 1931 in Alkmaar) is a Dutch artist. 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.
![](../I/Devries_lotus.jpg.webp)
De Vries began making art on the theme of "nature and plants" in 1953.[1] He began painting in the late 1950s.
One of his installations, from May 2002, is an explicit critique of Saint Boniface and his felling of the Donar Oak: he planted, on the bank of the Rhine in Düsseldorf, a 7-metre oak tree surrounded by a palisade of cast-iron, gold-tipped spears. Along the palisade is written, in Latin, wynfrith me caesit--herman me recreavit ("Wynfrid cut me down, Herman resurrected me").[1][2]
In 1993, as part of that year's World Horticultural Exposition in Stuttgart, de Vries created Sanctuarium, a small forest also enclosed by a circular palisade consisting of gold-tipped spears, in this case of wrought iron. His intention was for it to remain undisturbed, but the city parks department cleared the land in 2018 as part of a policy of periodic pruning. He and two other artists said they would take legal action against the city. A similar installation by de Vries in Münster is enclosed by a brick wall.[3]
References
- auf der Lake, Johannes. "die eiche - bonifacius revidiert". eMuseum (in German). City of Düsseldorf. Retrieved 2019-05-10.
- Schierz, Kai Uwe (2004). "Bonifatius, Beuys, heilige Eichen: Zur Genese eines künstlerischen Motivfeldes". Von Bonifatius bis Beuys - oder: vom Umgang mit heiligen Eichen. Erfurt: Kunsthalle Erfurt. pp. 17–18.
- Arning, Silke (5 April 2018). "Stadt Stuttgart rodet "Sanctuarium" von Herman de Vries. Naturkunstwerk - abrasiert". SWR2 (in German). Südwestrundfunk. Retrieved 2019-05-10.
External links
![](../I/Commons-logo.svg.png.webp)
- herman de vries – official site
- Biography at Art Facts