422 - Hermann Serient* (Melk 1935 - 2026 Oberwart)

Hermann Serient* (Melk 1935 - 2026 Oberwart) Village gossip, 1972 oil/board 18 x 12 cm verso signed and dated Serient 1972 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 800 - 1600 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 800 Hermann Serient is an Austrian artist of the 20th and 21st centuries who lives and works in Vienna and southern Burgenland. Born in Melk in 1935, he completed an apprenticeship as a goldsmith and attended a jewelry school before traveling through Europe in the 1960s as an artist, cartoonist for the Viennese Arbeiterzeitung (Workers' Newspaper), and jazz musician – often hitchhiking. He experimented with homemade instruments, took photographs, and produced animated films for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). From the 1970s onward, as a precursor to the Green movement, he addressed social and environmental issues such as environmental destruction and collective denial. Using Old Master techniques, similar to those of the representatives of Fantastic Realism and the Vienna School – Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter – and influenced by Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel, he created works with grotesque, enigmatic, fairytale-like, and mystical elements, closely resembling Surrealism. His motifs remain consistently contemporary, with sharp social commentary. Serient paints pristine landscapes of southern Burgenland, capturing light, time of day, and seasons in intensely colored moods. The luminosity arises from hand-mixed pigments in oil paints and egg tempera, often in graphic works, prints, and monotypes. Central cycles include the Heanzen cycle with its depiction of rural traditions, votive paintings, "The Madness Has Already Begun," "Icons of the 20th Century," and "Masks and Masked Figures." Exhibitions were held at the Burgenland State Gallery in Eisenstadt in 2005 and 2015. His work combines modernism with archaic forms and stands in the tradition of Franz Ringel, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Edgar Jené, Xenia Hausner, Anton Lehmden, and Franz Radziwill. Serient's votive paintings and landscape cycles such as "Freilichtatelier Südburgenland" criticize technologization and urge responsibility for the future. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.