Refugees

Josef Herman was a painter and draftsman known for his representations of the British working class. Herman was born in Warsaw, where he attended the School of Fine Arts, mounting his first exhibition at the school in 1932. He left Poland for Belgium in 1938 and two years later moved to the United Kingdom, where he spent the remainder of his life. His best-known works are those from an eight-year period during which he lived in Ystradgynlais, a Welsh mining town, where he painted simplified silhouettes of laborers against a range of tonal backdrops. Herman’s mining scenes earned him renown within the United Kingdom, leading to a mural commission for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Throughout his life, Herman continued to paint the working people he encountered during his travels.