Herman Roderick Volz
1904 - 1990

Herman Roderick Volz was born in Zurich, Switzerland on Dec. 25, 1904. From an early age Volz assisted his grandfather who was a master craftsman in decorative arts.

Volz then studied at the Art und Gewerbeschule in Zurich, the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, and for four years in France, Spain, Italy, and Holland.

Volz moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1933 and in 1939 painted murals on the façade of the Federal Building on Treasure Island. From 1944-48 he worked in Hollywood as a scenic artist and technical director at Actor's Lab. In the 1960s he established a home and studio in San Jose, California where he remained until died on Dec. 30, 1990.

Volz’s lithographs of the 1930s expressed social and political themes of that difficult period; his paintings are both representational and abstract. He was a strict modernist in all mediums. In his paintings his use of bold colors, cubist method and expressive subjects give is work a unique quality. His figurative works explore social commentary and the history that he lived in the difficult years of the 1930s and 1940s.

Volz was a member of the Council of Allied Arts in Los Angeles. He exhibited at the Berlin National Exhibition in 1927, the Paris Salon in 1937 where we won a prize. He exhibited at the San Francisco Art Association from1939 to 1941, Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939; he had a solo exhibition at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento in 1942.

Volz was a member of the California Watercolor Society. He designed and executed large mosaic murals at San Francisco City College; he was an artist of the WPS.

He is represented in the San Francisco Museum of Art.