Hermann Niebuhr

Hermann Niebuhr is a South African artist who lives in Johannesburg. He utilizes oils on canvas in a classical painterly style to document urban decay as well as rural landscapes.

Niebuhr was born in Johannesburg in 1972. He studied at Rhodes University, Grahamstown and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (with distinction in History of Art) in 1993.

He spent six years in the arid region of South Africa known as the Karoo. Working from the small town of De Rust, Niebuhr isolated himself and developed his technique. Upon his return to his hometown of Johannesburg in 2002, he began to confront the challenges of living and making art in one of Africa's largest and politically most complex cities.

Niebuhr's exhibition 'Night Shift' (2008) brought him to the heart of the city. Armed with only a camera, he entered the neighborhoods which had most dramatically shifted from Art Deco affluence in the mid-to-late 20th century to poverty and crime in the early 21st. Niebuhr photographed the foyers of the lovely old buildings and then painted them in oils, taking the perspective of the (somewhat symbolic) security guards protecting the edifices and their residents. These accurate and objective paintings, unpeopled but resonant with history, create a sense of melancholy around the city's decline.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2008South Africa Abroad, HODNETT FINE ART STUDIO GALLERY, Vancouver

2008Night Shift, THE CANOPY GALLERY, Johannesburg

2007
Antarctica - On Thin Ice, UNITED NATIONS GALLERY, New York

2006A Month of Sundays, GALLERY ON THE SQUARE, Johannesburg

2005Night Ride Home, ABSA GALLERY, Johannesburg

2004City Berlin, JABLONSKI STRASSE STUDIO, Berlin

2004An African in Ireland, ENNISKERRY GALLERY, Dublin

2004Celebrating 10 Years of Democracy, EVERARD READ GALLERY, Johannesburg

2004Town/Country, CAROL LEE FINE ART, Johannesburg

2001Up and Coming, SOAN STUDIO, London

2001South African Landscape, UNISA ART GALLERY, Pretoria

COLLECTIONS

Absa Bank; Weber Wenzel Bouens; KPMG; Sasol; Rhodes University; General Cologne; Rosengarten-Rosin & Wright; J.P.Morgan; SAB Miller

Bibliography

*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. [http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/TarkArticle.aspx?ID=2658511 "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. [http://www.richardscott.com/press/2005/04spring/businessday/richardscott_businessday01.pdf "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."

*Leyden, Mirelle. [http://www.visi.co.za "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. Excerpt: "Every piece of art - or every series of pieces that an artist creates - is entirely unique and therefore requires a rethink when it comes to displaying it."

*Masie, Desne. [http://www.braamfontein.org.za/show_article.php?articleid=356 "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. [http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/the-karoo-south-africas-living-desert/page/1/email "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-90’s 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."

*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.

External links

* [http://www.niebuhr.co.za Hermann Niebuhr's homepage]