Herman de Vries (born 11 July 1931 in

Alkmaar Alkmaar () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland. Alkmaar is well known fo ...

) 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 Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. De Vries began making art on the theme of "nature and plants" in 1953. He began painting in the late 1950s. One of his installations, from May 2002, is an explicit critique of

Saint Boniface Boniface, OSB (born Wynfreth; 675 –5 June 754) was an English Benedictines, Benedictine monk and leading figure in the Anglo-Saxon mission to the Germanic parts of Francia during the eighth century. He organised significant foundations of ...

and his felling of the Donar Oak: he planted, on the bank of the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

, 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"). In 1993, as part of that year's World Horticultural Exposition in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, 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 Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a ...

is enclosed by a brick wall.

References

External links

* – official site
Biography at Art Facts
1931 births Living people Dutch male painters Dutch contemporary painters People from Alkmaar Artists from North Holland {{Netherlands-painter-stub