Oskar Herman
Portrait of a Girl, 1907
oil on canvas
55.7 x 45 cm
MG-896
Oskar Herman (1886 –1974) first studied painting with Anton Ažbe in Munich, and then at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Since the 1930s, in theoretical texts, Herman’s name is added to the so-called Munich Circle (Račić, Kraljević, Becić). Apart from his stays in Zagreb, Berlin and Paris, Herman has, until 1933, lived permanently in the Bavarian capital. After World War II he moved to Zagreb, where he worked, among other things, as a curator at the Modern Gallery in the period between 1945 and 1949. The early Munich realism of dark tones grows into a distinct colourism of open forms in Herman’s later painting.
Herman used the Munich tonal modelling to render the realistic Portrait of a Girl from 1907. The accents of the red collar, shirt sleeves and blush of the cheeks, lips and the nose tip stand out in an otherwise dark colour gamut. The brush stroke is visible and applied in thick impasto layers.
Text: Ivana Rončević Elezivić, Museum advisor of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022