Information on Creative Work and Achievements
According to several references in literature, Prof. Robert Hammerstiel is “one of the leading graphic artists in the world today”.
He has had more than 120 solo exhibitions and 50 group exhibitions. He exhibited in the most prominent galleries in: Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Rome, Bremen, Graz, Dortmund, Köln, Düsseldorf, Nürnberg, St. Pölten, Paderborn, Hannover, Münster, Mulhous, Salzburg, Prague, Ternitz, Gloggnitz, Svishtov, Villach, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Vršac, Ulm, Bruges, Lublin, Varna, Winterthur, Ostfildern, Basel, Zagreb, Bratislava, Kochi, Agora d’Evry, Grenchen.
His works are in the property of the most prominent museums and galleries of Europe and North America- in Vienna, Brauschweig, Salzburg, Karlsruhe, Hamburg, Münich, Düsseldorf, Gronau, Villach, Rome, London, Paris, San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, Novi Sad, Vršac, Sophia, Lugano, Berlin, Recklinghausen, Lublin.
He is the recipient of more than 20 high honors and awards in Austria, Hungary, France, Bulgaria, Germany, Serbia, Italy, the Vatican and Poland.
He is very attached to Vršac and Vojvodina, exhibiting this fondness since the early seventies, when he returned to Vršac and Vojvodina, for the first time after 1948, and his escape from the internment camp for Germans.
Throughout three decades he has been active in cultural and art events in SFRY: Počitelj, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Vršac, Mostar, solo exhibitions in Novi Sad (2005), Vršac (2002), and in Belgrade (2004).
He has donated more than 60 paintings to the Museum of Vojvodina, and more than 30 to the City Museum of Vršac.
His entire artistic and social output is directed towards the affirmation of values typical for Vojvodina’s society through his outstanding and widely recognized professional achievements- art, multicultural values, tolerance, the appreciation of diversity, as well as a civilized and prosperous coexistence with neighbors. This is also reflected in the fact that he speaks German, Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian.
In the CD presentation of his life and work, which was made for his solo exhibition in the Leopold Museum in Vienna, February-April 2006, half of the presentation is dedicated to his growing up in Vršac, his memories of Vršac and its surroundings, his life in the old and new Vršac, his Banat roots, and the traces of Banat and Vojvodina that endure throughout almost his entire artistic opus.
A great artist and a great man, recognized early on by prominent art historians and art critics, especially Prof. Dr. Rudolf Leopold, due to whom he was granted the opportunity, as a precedent, to exhibit in the Leopold Museum in Vienna, a museum exhibiting the work of many world-famous artists (Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka …), many of whom are not amongst the living. The art of Roberta Hammerstiel is profoundly deep, full of silent magnitude, strength, certitude and steadiness. He inspires us with his efforts for the affirmation of Vršac and Vojvodina in the world. Vršac has the privilege and the honor, as well as does Vojvodina, the place from which he hails, and to which he always returns, that Roberta Hammerstiel is a man of the world, as well as one of our own.
An artist about whom a prominent critic had to say: “Hammerstiel is the legitimate heir of a Munch, a Matisse, and an Ensor” (J.P. Hodinh, London 1997).
Selected Publications