Sali Herman(1898-1993) Arrived in Sydney in 1938,Aged forty ,life began again.When the Art Gallery of New South Wale's 1944 Wynne Prize for an Australian landscape went to his McElhone stairs it was controvercial.No urban or suburban scenes had won before,and his picturesque bit of old Woolloomooloo was called a clumsy,an-Australian 'slumscape'.Informed observers ,however ,recognised French modernism,similar to Maurice Utrillo's Pars street scenes,and knew that the uniquely expressive textured surfaces descended from Gourbet and Van Gogh.The scraped and gouged palette-knife technique suited the frontal-slab subjects found down below the artist's home which was in Wylde street, Potts Point.Herman developed masterful skills at depicting plaster,brickwork,rusting iron, curling timber palings,and peeling paintwork .Herman never painted outdoors.He always worked in the studio from annotated drawings.In 1960 ,after twenty years at inner-city Potts Point Herman moved to the distant seaside suburb of Avalon.There he developed a fresher repertory of sub-tropical garden scenes.After his wife died in 1972, he began making annual visits to Europe.Sali Herman died in 1993.