HANNA MERIANS (The Art Estate)
We acquired the art estate of Hanna Merians several years ago from one of her close friends in 1999,
Hanna Merians was born in Tiberias, on the shore of the
sea of Galilee. Shortly after the founding of the State of Israel, she
was sent to Paris to complete her studies. It is in Paris that she was
first exposed to the world of modern plastic and graphic arts. Her first
serious work was done during a four year stay in the far east, using both
European and oriental techniques, which she studied with local masters.
In 1961 Hanna Merians moved to the U.S.A. and earned her Bachelor’s
degree in Fine Arts at the San Francisco Academy. She has also studied
at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and at the University
of Madrid.
From 1969 to 1973 she worked at the Center for Contemporary Graphic Arts
in Geneva, Switzerland and also with Pietro Sarto in the Atelier de Taille
Douce in St. Prex. The result has been a thorough mastery of the techniques
of etching and lithography. The following three years she lived in Singapore,
including travels to Indonesia in order to study Batik.
Hanna Merians’ wide travels and extended sojourns all over the world
have enriched her work and made it many-sided. It has, however, never
dislodged a basic unity of concept which sees humanity as the sensitive
center of a colorful kaleidoscope of love, brutality, fear and wonder.
Her work, even at its most surrealistic, has an obvious link to people.
Hanna Merians died of cancer on March 29, 1991 in her house in Sausalito, California.
