SALI HERMAN (1898-1993)

Sali Herman was a Swiss-born artist, who immigrated to Australia in 1937, and produced a body of work which predominantly depicts urban and domestic scenes of Melbourne’s streets and slums. Herman was born in Zurich in 1898 as the eleventh of eleven children, to Jewish-Polish parents Israel Hermann Yakubowitsch and Sahra Mirlia, née Malinski. As a teenager, he studied life-drawing and composition at the Zurich Technical school, and moved to Paris for a short time, experiencing the culture of the city and encountering the work of artists such as Van Gogh, Manet, and Courbet. In 1937, along with many other Europeans, Herman immigrated to Australia where he studied at the George Bell school that same year. He enlisted in the Army in 1941, and in 1945 became a war artist for five months, working around the Pacific in Lae, Torokina, Bougainville, and Rabaul.

Herman was awarded two Sir John Sulman Prizes, and four Wynne Prizes over the course of the 1940s and 1960s for his creative efforts. In 1971 he was given an OBE, and a CMG in 1982, both for services to art. His retrospective was held in 1981 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.