Josef Herman was the foreign artist who put the British working class on a pedestal. He will be probably best remembered for his renderings of Welsh miners.
Born in Warsaw in 1911, into a poor family in the Jewish slum area, eldest of three children, his formal education finished at the age of 12. He became an apprentice printer compositor but due to lead poisoning , he could not work as a printer and branched out to become a commercial artist and designed book jackets and posters - This type of work supplied him with interesting contacts with members of the Warsaw “intelligentsia” , many of them with strong left-wing views- both in literature and art. He was also encouraged to study art, seeing that he had real talent for drawing. Evening classes with Professor Slupski led to being admitted in 1930 to the Warsaw School of Art and Decoration which he could hardly afford and left after 18 months. He continued drawing and painting in his spare time and in 1932 had his first exhibition in Warsaw in a framers shop, showing mostly large expressionistic watercolours featuring peasants in sombre colours. He came under the spell of Munch - particularly his late works - and participated in avant garde art groups and started writing. By 1936 he became a leading light of The Phrygyan Bonnet - a left wing group intent on painting people at work. Summers were spent in the Carpathian mountains, among peasants whom they portrayed in monumental ways.

He spent almost two years hiding from the police once his left wing activities became known. This, together with the mounting anti Semitism, prompted him to leave Poland in 1938 ….His destination, because of Brueghel, was Belgium. Here he became friendly with Permeke; whose stylistic influence was the most important throughout his career with his renderings of people at work in somber, at other times ,dazzling colours. "The very act of painting is already well on the way to expression, but only one’s natural genius for thinking with the material can raise technique from mere method to an integral whole with the thought, the feeling , the how and the why of a work. I….In this mastery of Permeke’s perhaps even more than in his originality , lies his significance” said Herman in his book “Related Twilights”.

This idyll, however , was interrupted with the approach of the German occupation and through the help of Ensor, he got to France from where managed to get on a ship by an extraordinary stroke of luck with the Polish Air Force. He was commanded to go to Glasgow in 1940 and wait for further orders which never arrived - Here he spent four years, renewed his friendship with Yankel Adler, and married Catriona Macleod in 1942. His first exhibition was at the James Connell Gallery, followed by another in Edinburgh, at the Aitken and Dott Gallery in 1942. Designed for the stage and costumes for The Celtic Ballet.the same year.

On learning about the death of his whole family in the Holocaust in 1943/44, he started a visual diary of his childhood. This was discovered in 1984 and formed the basis of a touring show “ Memory of Memories” in London and Glasgow. In, a joint one with Lowry - at Reid and Lefevre where he met Gustave Delbanco which led to him being associated with the Roland, Browse and Delbanco gallery in Cork Street for over thirty years.
In 1944 he visited Ystradgynlais in South Wales on holiday but decided to settle, first at the Pen y Bont Inn; six years later bought 1943 he had his first London exhibition a defunct factory and converted into living and studio space. It was in 1951 that he received a commission to paint the mural entitled Miners for the Pavilion of Minerals, for Festival of Britain which firmly established his reputation.
His 11 years at Ystradgynlais finished in 1955. He moved to Suffolk with Dr Nini Ettlinger whom he married in 1961. The tragic death of their young daughter prompted them to move away and since 1972 Herman stayed in the same house in West London where he died in February 2000.
Herman’s artistic achievements were probably more appreciated during the fifties and sixties when he was showing in a great number of one-man exhibitions throughout the UK. in 1953 he had a touring show that started at Leicester, then went to York, Hull and Wakefield.
A major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956 was the last time he had a large public gallery showing his work in London
Outside London he fared better and had major one man shows in Edinburgh, Sheffield, Bradford , Bristol - in 1958-59. The Glynn Vivian mounted a highly successful retrospective in 1963 and 1965 was the last time he had a major touring show that travelled to Middlesborough, The Laing in Newcastle, Abbot Hall in Kendal, Sunderland, Darlington, Colchester and the Towner in Eastbourne (1966 ).
In 1967 the Fitzwilliam showed drawings from the Peter Stuyvesant Collection and the same year he had solo exhibitions at the Plymouth City and Reading City Art Galleries . His work was featured at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 1969 Scotland hosted further one man shows in the seventies: he had a major retrospective in 1975 in Glasgow which toured to Edinburgh’s Scottish Museum of Modern Art before it went to the National Museum of Wales.
His retrospective at the Camden Art Centre in 1980 was well received. He never followed any fashions in art and never courted for favours.
Great tribute was paid by the Arts Council when they organised a touring show of 50 Drawings and 50 tribal carvings at Durham, Bristol , Swansea, Sheffield, Coventry and Orkney .- He had a retrospective in at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 1992 but in London only private galleries have shown his works. Angela Flowers and the Boundary Gallery have been particularly involved.
He has been shown extensively, abroad - in 1956 had a retrospective in public galleries in Melbourne and Auckland. He was shown on smaller scale in Switzerland, Germany and the USA - New York hosted two exhibitions during the eighties. In mixed exhibitions he has been displayed in many British Council shows, all over the world. He was awarded OBE for his services to British Art in 1981 and in 1990 became a Royal Academician. Received Silver Medal for his services to Welsh Arts in 1992.