Curriculum vitae

Portrait of Hanna Scheriau as a child, painted by her uncle, Dr.Josef Schmidt, who died due to an accident at a young age. He was a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, student and friend of Prof. Carl Fahringer.

Hanna Scheriau was born in Vienna (16.11.1942), and the family thereafter moved to Salzburg. Since generations there has been a call to the arts in the family, namely to music, literature and last but not least to painting.

After finishing her schooling Hanna Scheriau studied Drama at the University of Vienna giving priority to “scenery and costume“.

She was fortunate enough to have had studied at a time when dedicated and disciplined teachers were lecturing in Drama, who taught practically. The curriculum at the time included the drawing and painting of personal designs for such topics as “scenery and costume“.

Hanna Scheriau also absolved the “International Summer Academy Salzburg“, Oskar Kokoschka’s legendary “School of Seeing“, namely at a time when Kokoschka himself was still present (1962).

On the occasion of the famous AIDA presentation under Herbert von Karajan, at the SALZBURG FESTIVAL in the summer of 1979, the artist Hanna Scheriau was approached by the “Salzburger Nachrichten” to write an article about the origin of the Aida costume. In the inserts to the festival edition of the presentation, dated July 28th, the article was published together with two of her handmade Indian ink paintings.

Despite family commitments (which included three daughters) Hanna Scheriau never gave up her passion for drawing and painting.

Around the year 2000 she discovered the medium SILK for her artistic work and developed a completely new way of painting, the “Experimental Painting on Silk”. Since then she is a free-lance artist living in the near of Salzburg.

This new style and technique requires a great deal of energy and feeling and painting skills. Each of the images is fresh and unique and can not be copied. Unlike canvas and paper the silk here while painting is free to move. The final image afterwards is mounted on canvas (or cardboard under glass).

The artistic work of Hanna Scheriau is an unknown kind of art, also because of silk, a material that can not be found in today's art scene in this form. But silk is a medium for painting since thousands of years and extremely durable, much more than canvas. The silk paints for artists are liquid, they are light fast and have a very special luminosity.

“...The reason why silk has become interesting for Hanna Scheriau is not least because of the effects which can be obtained here and are not possible in other technologies. The mysterious splendor, the luminous depth, and the scope are classified into ranging infinite pictorial space - these are all properties that are special feature of artistic works of Hanna Scheriau...”

from “Handbook of the German Commercial Art 2009”, Dr.Helmut Orpel (Art historian and author)

Exhibitions of works of Hanna Scheriau took place not only in Europe but also in Asia and America. Her work has been awarded in several countries (US, UK, RU, IT, FR, DE, MC). In collections around the world paintings of Hanna Scheriau can be found, and she is present in major books on "Visual Art".