Petr Herel

Printmaker and celebrated artist book maker Petr Herel was born in Czechoslovakia and trained at the Prague College of the Visual Arts between 1957 and 1961. He received a Master of Arts from the Prague Academy of Applied Arts in 1969. He was awarded a scholarship by the French Ministry of Culture in 1971, and arrived in Australia in 1973. Herel has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Paris, and his work has been included in several group shows at institutions including the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. An advocate of artist book making, he presented a collection of 246 books to the library of the Australian National University, Canberra. He was awarded the Henri Worland Print Prize in 1983 and the Ukranian Lviv Interprint Honorary Medal in 1992. Herel taught at the Dijon Ecole des Beaux Arts from 1977 – 78, the Canberra School of Art from 1979 – 1985, the Orleans Institut des Arts Visuel from 1985 – 1986 and the Canberra Institute of Arts at the Australian National University from 1986. His work is held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the National Library of Australia, Canberra, most state galleries, and internationally in collections in Prague, the Czech Republic, Vienna and the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris. A monograph titled Petr Herel, Artists books, was published by the National Library of Australia in 1989. In 2011 the artist book The Distant Present: Three Poems from the book of epigrams, by Dimitris Tsaloumas with etchings by Petr Herel was produced in conjunction with Australian Galleries.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS

2015