Herman de Vries

Born in Alkmaar in 1931, de Vries trained as a gardener before turning to art in the late 1950s. He became associated with the Zero group, alongside Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni, and edited the magazines nul and revue intégration, developing an aleatoric practice in which chance governs the work. From the mid-1970s, natural materials — soil, leaves, juniper berries, stones — became his primary medium, collected or arranged on paper to bring the presence of a specific place into the gallery. He prefers his name in lower-case. In 2015 he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale with to be all ways to be. He lives in Eschenau, Germany.