Hermann Niebuhr

• De Vries, Fred. The Fred de Vries Interviews: from Abdullah to Zille. Wits University Press, 2008.

A collection of 39 interviews with South Africans of note, this book includes an interview with Hermann Niebuhr.

• De Vries, Fred. "Joburg ‘teases, inspires, tears me apart,’" Business Day, April 21, 2007.

Excerpt: "Niebuhr's latest project is the logical follow-up to his 2005 exhibition, Night Ride Home, which encapsulated the nightly journeys from his studio in Fordsburg to his house in Kensington. It resulted in a beautiful, almost dreamlike overview at the Absa Gallery, full of blurred visions and shattered lights, a kind of Edward Hopper for the 21st century. The new paintings seem to go even deeper. “As your language develops you're able to describe more authentically the things you can see," says Niebuhr. “That's what I'm doing now. I go into the buildings. And once you're inside, they will still carry the knowledge from when you first saw them and thought: ‘Oh my God’."

• Dodd, Alexandra. "On the Stoep in Fordsburg," Business Day, December 2005.

Excerpt: "Niebuhr’s recent depopulated cityscapes are infused with the speed and pace of the city. More about selection and reduction than direct representation, they capture a sense of how it feels to be downtown."

• Dodd, Alexandra. Catalog for Night Shift. 2008.

Excerpt: "In the sense that Niebuhr is recording lived life in the city right now, he is a documentarist, but his practice as a painter militates against the objectivity and immediacy of social realist endeavours."

• Huddleston, Sarah. "A Lighter Approach to Painting Places", The Weekender, March 7, 2009. Preview of exhibition "Champagne for my Facebook Friends."

Excerpt: “Compared with my last show, this one is much lighter,” Niebuhr says. Niebuhr's paintings of distorted portraits of people began with a request to paint a nude for an exhibition. He photographed a figure through glass bricks and then painted this muddled image. The works are reminiscent of the distorted portraits of Francis Bacon, who coined the phrase “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.”

• Larkin, Naomi. "The Shopper: Naomi Larkin," The Times, May 2, 2009. Interview with House & Leisure editor Naomi Larkin about her favorite home items.

Excerpt: "Best all-time purchase: A painting by Hermann Niebuhr."

• Leibov, Bernard. "Into Stillness." July 6, 2014. Observations on Niebuhr's artist residency at BOXO in Joshua Tree, California.

Excerpt: "Hermann drove off on several exploratory trips including a one day marathon to Amboy, Death Valley, Johannesburg, CA and back. Phew. Some rich material quickly flowed from these bursts of energy. On the night following the full moon, we undertook a moonlit bicycle ride in the National Park which sparked the inspiration for one of the large canvases."

• Leyden, Mirelle. "finders keepers," Visi, Autumn 2008. Interview with art gallery owners in Johannesburg, including Frances Coulter, who curated Niebuhr's exhibit Night Shift, pictured in the article.
• Malaba, Frank. "Interview on Business Arts South Africa on Radio Today" Journalist Frank Malaba interviews artist Hermann Niebuhr about the stories behind the landscape paintings in the November 2013 exhibition "Stillness," and the opening evening collaboration with musician Chris Letcher and filmmaker Lloyd Ross.
• Masie, Desne. "Nightshift, an exhibition by Hermann Niebuhr," Financial Mail, March 7, 2008.

Excerpt: "The paintings depict the foyers of Hillbrow flats. Stark and provocative, they encourage you to look a little deeper and even make you want to venture inside. But a strange silence resonates from them. They show the quiet mystery of the city's witching hour - 3 am - when security guards (though neither they nor other people feature) pass the hours watching over sleeping flat-dwellers."

• Rogers, Douglas. "The Karoo: South Africa’s Living Desert", Travel+Leisure, March 2008.

Excerpt: "His name is Hermann Niebuhr, and he’d stunned us all after we graduated from university in South Africa in the mid-90s by buying a tumbledown tin-roof shack in a remote Karoo dorp (village) where, he said, he planned to live the life of the ascetic artist, painting desolate landscapes populated by scrub, sand, and rusty windmills. Ah well, to each his own."

• Shackleford, Graeme. "Art Scene: Niebuhr paints the city", Rosebank Killarney Gazette, January 2012.

Excerpt: "The artist sees himself as a chronicler of an outer and an inner landscape. 'I'm inspired by the city - it's the drama of a deeply problematic space that is contested and unequal. I'd like to think that my work gets to the heart of the South African condition. Johannesburg is the microcosm of South Africa's story,' he said."

• Shackleford, Graeme. "Capturing Stillness on Canvas", "Rosebank Killarney Gazette", November 2013.

Excerpt: "Artist Hermann Niebuhr, known for his cityscapes that seem to pulsate with the very life of Johannesburg itself, made a departure from the theme in preparation for his upcoming exhibition.Titled Stillness, Niebuhr’s new body of work has its point of origin in the artist’s quest to find a point of stillness and balance, following personal trials and tribulations.“This series of paintings started after some major life changes. I went through a trying time, and took up meditation to try cope, regroup and find my haven,” he said.Along with meditation, Niebuhr also took up cycling, and spent 12 days riding in the Himalayas with a group of friends, which he described as an “incredible journey”. The cyclists also rode through De Hel, somewhat closer to home.“Passing through these landscapes was conducive to finding paintings, and I found they possessed the sense of the stillness I was after. I wanted to paint works that evoke a sense of stillness in the viewer,” he said.

• Shapshak, Toby. "Gifted", Wanted, July 2008. The journalist names his print of Niebuhr's painting Homage as one of his top ten most precious possessions.
• Talotta, Josef. "Hot Stuff!", Wanted, December 2007. An article about Niebuhr's painting Expedition, about global warming in Antarctica, shown at the United Nations Gallery.
• van Heerden, Carina. "Mine Dumps", Dekat, December 2009. An article featuring and quoting Niebuhr on the mine dumps and their historical impact on Joburg. Includes reproductions of paintings from the mine exhibition.

Excerpt: “Without the gold mines Johannesburg would not have been here, and the mine dumps are what’s left of that era,” says Hermann. “That’s why the mine dumps are so specifically ‘Johannesburg’: they are handmade and iconic and they represent the reasons why we’re here.”

• Hermann Niebuhr's homepage
• Facebook business page for Hermann Niebuhr, Artist