Hermann Scherer was born in
Rümmingen,
Baden-Württemberg in 1893. After leaving school in 1907, Scherer began an apprenticeship as a stonemason at the Schwab workshop in
Lörrach. From 1910 to 1919 he worked as a stonemason with a series of
Basel sculptors: Carl Gutknecht, Otto Roos and
Carl Burckhardt. By working as a labourer and later assistant for Roos, he was able to pay for a small workshop. In 1919, Scherer took a new contemporary approach to art (and painting), and destroyed many of the works he had previously made. From 1921 to 1922 he was influenced by the work of the German painters
Erich Heckel,
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. In the early 1920s he visited an
Edvard Munch exhibition at the
Kunsthaus Zürich and met Kirchner, whom he would later visit for several long painting trips in
Davos from 1923 to 1924. In June 1923, the
Kunsthalle Basel held a first representative exhibit of Kirchners work in Switzerland. In August, he visited Kirchner in Davos-Frauenkrich. == Legacy ==