Josef Herman

Josef Herman
Born	3 January 1911 in Warsaw, Poland.
Died	19 February 2000 Suffolk, England
Known for	Painting

Josef Herman OBE (3 January 1911 – 19 February 2000), was a highly regarded Polish-British realist painter who influenced contemporary art, particularly in the UK. His work often had subjects of workers and was inherently political. He was among more than a generation of eastern European Jewish artists who emigrated to escape persecution and worked abroad. For eleven years he lived in South Wales.

Herman was born in Warsaw, Poland into a Jewish family, on 3 January 1911. He attended the Warsaw School of Art for two years before working briefly as a graphic artist.

In 1938 at the age of 27, Herman left Poland for Brussels to escape anti-Semitism. He was introduced to many of the prominent artists then working in the city. After the beginning of World War II and the German invasion of Belgium, he escaped to France and then to Great Britain. He first lived in Glasgow before moving to London for a time. There he met numerous other European émigrés, such as the Hungarian Michael Peto, with whom he became friends. When Peto decided to go into photography after the war, Herman encouraged him in his new endeavor and supported his progress as a photojournalist.

Herman's own style was bold and distinctive, involving strong shapes with minimal detail. He continued to work up to his death in 2000.

Herman studied working people as the subjects of his art, including grape pickers, fishermen and, most notably, coal miners. The latter became a particular interest for Herman during the eleven years that he lived in Ystradgynlais, a mining community in South Wales, beginning in 1944. He became part of the community, where he was fondly nicknamed "Joe Bach". Among his creative collaborators and friends in Wales was the artist Will Roberts, who lived in Neath.

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