Hermann Grüneberg: The Ballad of the Fallen is on view at Galerie Herold, Hamburg
September 3 – October 9, 2026
In the autumn of 2021, Hermann Grüneberg (b. 1983) arrived at Galerie Herold in Hamburg’s Colonnaden carrying nothing but a suitcase filled with ceramic plates. One by one, he unpacked them across the parquet floor—and within minutes it was clear that he would be returning to Halle with an empty suitcase.
Grüneberg’s imagery speaks of love, grief, transience, and memory with poetry, quiet irony, and remarkable tenderness toward his figures. His works are understood intuitively, long before they ask to be explained.
For Grüneberg, ceramics are never merely a surface for an image. Plates, vessels, figures, and sculptures become protagonists in their own right. Form shapes the narrative: glazes flow unpredictably, lines dissolve, and surfaces retain the traces of their making. Every work is a unique, hand-built object in clay—organic rather than geometric, irregular rather than perfect, and the very opposite of porcelain’s polished precision.
With The Ballad of the Fallen, Grüneberg draws inspiration from Charlie Haden’s landmark jazz album of the same title, released in the year of the artist’s birth, 1983. As Katherina Perlongo writes in the accompanying catalogue, Grüneberg’s figures often wear crowns and evoke the iconography of saints, yet their authority has been quietly undone. His attention turns instead to “the bowed, the doubtful, and the melancholic,” whose dignity reveals itself precisely through vulnerability.
His artistic process is fundamentally additive. During walks through cities, cemeteries, and historic architecture, Grüneberg takes impressions of faces, ornaments, and architectural details. These impressions form an ever-expanding archive of moulds from which his figures are continually reassembled—fragment by fragment—creating bodies that feel simultaneously ancient and unmistakably contemporary.
On his ceramic plates, sculptural form gives way to drawing. The traditional wall plate becomes a pictorial ground for immediate, intuitive compositions: playful, humorous, and touched by a subtle sense of the uncanny. His newest series of vases further explores the dialogue between colour and form across curved ceramic surfaces.
A comprehensive exhibition catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
About the artist
Hermann Grüneberg was born in Weimar in 1983. After training as a wood sculptor, he studied Sculpture and Ceramics at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle from 2008 to 2015, where he became a Meisterschüler under Martin Neubert. Since 2015, he has taught at the university. Most recently, he created a major site-specific installation for Heroldian Art: a private interior featuring approximately 500 handmade ceramic tiles and a two-storey sculptural figure group.
Contact
herold@galerie-herold.de
Galerie Herold
Colonnaden 5
20354 Hamburg
Germany
Captions
- Installation views, Hermann Grüneberg: The Ballad of the Fallen at Galerie Herold, Hamburg, 2026
- Hermann Grüneberg, Ensemble, 2026, Ceramic. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Müder Blick, 2026, Ceramic, 46 cm; Rosenkranz, 2026, Ceramic, 51 cm; Sommervase, 2026, Ceramic, 41 cm, 2026. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Lohengrinn (Erste Fassung), 2023, Ceramic. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Sitzende (Hand vor Brust), 2026, Ceramic, 79 x 24 x 31 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Stehende Figur mit Stab, 2026, Ceramic, 76 x 25 x 21 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Frau mit Blumen, 2026, Ceramic, 46 x 35 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Frau mit Maske II, 2026, Ceramic, 45 x 42 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Frau mit Maske, 2026, Ceramic, 64 x 42 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Junge mit Vase, 2026, Ceramic,41 x 25 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, Narcissus, 2026, Ceramic, 66 x 56 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
- Hermann Grüneberg, the clown, 2026, Ceramic, 44 x 31 cm. Photo by Tom Dachs
