Herr Seele, the pseudonym of Peter Van Heirseele (

Torhout Torhout (; french: Thourout; vls, Toeroet) is a city and municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Torhout proper, the villages of Wijnendale and Sint-Henricus, and the hamlet of De Dr ...

, Belgium, 13 April 1959), is a

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

cartoonist, author, actor, piano tuner and piano collector. He is mainly known for the

absurd humor Surreal humour (also called surreal comedy, absurdist humour, or absurdist comedy) is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, thus producing events and behaviours that are obviously illogical. Portrayals of surrea ...

comic strip ''

Cowboy Henk ''Cowboy Henk'' is a Belgian absurd/surreal humour gag-a-day comic strip series drawn by Herr Seele and written by Kamagurka. It was originally published in the newspaper ''De Morgen'', but later taken over by the magazine ''HUMO'', in which it ...

'', for which his colleague

Kamagurka Luc Zeebroek (born 5 May 1956), better known as Kamagurka, is a Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, suc ...

writes the scripts, while he makes the drawings. The comic has been published in ''

HUMO ''HUMO'' is a popular Dutch-language Belgian weekly radio and television supermarket tabloid. History and profile ''Humoradio'' (meaning a portmanteau of 'humor' and 'radio' in English) was first published in 1936 as a Dutch-language counterpa ...

'' since 1981 with only a minor interruption from October 2011 until the spring of 2013. During this period Seele made another

gag-a-day A gag-a-day comic strip is the style of writing comic cartoons such that every installment of a strip delivers a complete joke or some other kind of artistic statement. It is opposed to story or continuity strips, which rely on the development of ...

comic series ''Dikke Billie Walter''. Since the spring of 2013 ''Cowboy Henk'' appears in the magazine again.

Biography

Van Heirseele was born in

and attended the Sint-Jozefsinstituut. When he was sixteen, he went to the

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...

Academy for the Fine Arts, where he completed his high school years and followed a year in sculpting, after which he learned to tune and repair pianos at the Ystrad Mynach School in

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. He then went to

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

, Italy, where he learned how to renovate them.

Career

In 1981, he began drawing ''

'' with

, for the first time using the pseudonym of ''Herr Seele''. Originally, the comic was intended for '' De Vooruit'', but they soon became an exclusive item in ''

''. ''Cowboy Henk'' was published in several countries, including Brazil (in a comics magazine named ''Animal''),

Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Swe ...

and the United States of America (''

RAW Raw is an adjective usually describing: * Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made * Raw food, uncooked food Raw or RAW may also refer to: Computing and electronics * .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...

)''. In 1983, Herr Seele starts acting for television, his first show being ''Sfeervol Bullshitten'', which was written by Kamagurka. It was followed in 1985 by a 20-part series, called ''Kamagurka en Herr Seele'', written by the duo for the Dutch

VPRO The VPRO (stylized vpro; originally an acronym for , ) is a Dutch public broadcaster, which forms a part of the Dutch public broadcasting system. Founded in 1926 as a liberal Protestant broadcasting organization, it gradually became more ...

. After these first successes, other shows followed like ''Johnnywood'', ''Wees Blij Met Wat Je Hebt'', ''Lava'' and ''Bob & George''. He has also made the radio show '' Studio Kafka'' with Kamagurka.

Piano Collection

Herr Seele owns one of the most renowned collections of early historic pianos in the world, which is stored at

Ostend Ostend ( nl, Oostende, ; french: link=no, Ostende ; german: link=no, Ostende ; vls, Ostende) is a coastal city and municipality, located in the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerk ...

and contains over 200 instruments. He is also a

piano tuner Piano tuning is the act of adjusting the tension of the strings of an acoustic piano so that the musical intervals between strings are in tune. The meaning of the term 'in tune', in the context of piano tuning, is not simply a particular fixed ...

himself.

Album cover design

He designed the cover of ''"Steelt de Schouw!" (1994)'' for Pater Moeskroen.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Seele, Herr Belgian comics artists 20th-century Belgian painters 21st-century Belgian painters Belgian stand-up comedians 20th-century Flemish male actors Belgian cartoonists Belgian male comedians Belgian comedy musicians Belgian radio presenters Belgian surrealist artists Flemish television presenters Belgian male singers People from Turnhout Album-cover and concert-poster artists Underground cartoonists Piano tuners 1959 births Living people Raw (magazine) 21st-century Flemish male actors