Herman Cherry | |
|---|---|
 Herman Cherry, Self Portrait, 1927, oil on canvas, 15 x 12 inches | |
| Born | Hyman Cherry April 10, 1909 |
| Died | April 10, 1992 (aged 83) Manhattan, New York |
| Nationality | U. S. citizen |
| Spouse(s) | Ruby ("Denny") Sonke Cherry, Regina Kremer Cherry |
Herman Cherry (1909–1992) was a non-objective abstract painter who participated in all five of the artist-curated Stable Gallery exhibitions in Manhattan between 1953 and 1957 and who received his first New York solo exhibition at Stable in 1955. In the early 1930s, he was a student first of the synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright at the Art Students League of Los Angeles and next of the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York. Afterward, Cherry managed a small gallery within a Hollywood bookshop where he gave Philip Guston his first exhibition and where his own first solo was later held. Having transitioned from social realism to cubist-inspired abstraction in the 1940s, Cherry joined with the artists who later became collectively known as the New York School in establishing a style that later became known as Abstract expressionism. Key members of this group were Cherry's friends Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning.
Cherry's mature works were entirely abstract. Known as a masterful colorist, he often received favorable attention from critics and art historians. In 1984, the art historian Helen A. Harrison wrote: "At a time when many artists seem to be angered by paint itself, using it crudely and with little apparent regard for its inherent beauty, Cherry comes off as something of a romantic. His evident enchantment with the medium is expressed in terms of tonal relationships. His colors become characters that act out roles relative to each other, according to their own scenario—sometimes dramatic, sometimes mysterious, occasionally even humorous—as directed by the master's hand. And that direction is as respectful of each color's individuality as it is sensitive to the results of their confrontations and interactions."[1]
During a career that spanned nearly six decades, Cherry's work appeared frequently in solo and group exhibitions within commercial galleries, museums, and the galleries of artists' collectives. Throughout his career, he was active in artists' associations, gave lectures on art, taught art as a visiting professor, wrote articles for art journals, and produced a book of poetry. Born in New Jersey to parents who had emigrated from Eastern Europe, he grew up in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and later spent much of his adult life in Manhattan, Woodstock, and East Hampton, New York.