Germany
Herbert W.H. Hundrich
My roots lie in the Wadden Sea.
But my art has carried me to the shores of the world’s oceans.
To the westernmost point of mainland Europe – in Brittany, France, Finistère – what the Romans once called the end of the world. In the Breton language: Penn-ar-Bed – the beginning of the world. Near the lighthouse Phare du Créac’h – a tiny dot on any map – lies the bay of Croa’z’Naoun, the Cross of the Soul.
There, for years, I carved my sculptures into the seabed at low tide, traced drawings across the rocks.
When the tide returned, I left my studio beneath the sea and climbed into the cliffs above, watching as my drawings dissolved, my daily work submerged and lost beneath the waves.
The tides ruled my time, my life.
Storm, wind, and rain were not disturbances – they became part of my practice, part of me.
I heard the storm before it arrived, saw the rain coming from afar like a grey wall across the sea, felt it drench me and pass.
At times, I am the solitary figure in the ivory tower, obsessively shaping a personal vocabulary of forms.
At others, I am an engaged artist, using my work to speak out on political and social matters.
I have lived and worked as an artist in Germany, France, and Spain, and traveled through Asia and the Americas – not as a tourist, but in moments of chosen stillness, to deeply encounter a place, and always – to work, to create.
I have drawn in the sands of distant shores, watched the waves, sketched their restless play.
In the cities, I observed the rain as it gathered along the streets – sometimes rushing like a river into the drains.
There too, I saw the cycle of water – and within it, the cycle of life.
For all their abstraction, my works never stop speaking of the human being – and our condition humaine.
When I speak of people, I must speak of nature.
And when I speak of nature, I refuse to silence the nature of humankind
