Warsaw, Poland
Between 1930 and 1932 Herman attended the Warsaw School of Art (now Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw).
Brussels, Belgium
Herman enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and fell under the formative influence of Constant Permeke.
Warsaw, Poland
Between 1930 and 1932 Herman attended the Warsaw School of Art (now Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw).
Brussels, Belgium
Herman enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and fell under the formative influence of Constant Permeke.
Josef Herman.
London, United Kingdom
Josef Herman in his studio in London.
Josef Herman painting.
Young Josef Herman.
Herman was born in Warsaw, Poland, on January 3, 1911. He was the eldest of three children in a poor Jewish family. His father, David Herman, was a Jewish cobbler. Sarah Krukman was his mother. Josef Herman was brought up in great poverty, mostly on the streets of the Jewish quarter.
Josef Herman attended a school in Warsaw until the age of 13. As a child, Herman adopted a habit of rising at 4 a.m. every day, so that he had some time to himself, before the bustle of the day began. This habit he maintained all his life, whatever time he went to bed. At this time he also got acquainted with Master Xavery Rex and Dr. Saltzman. From Master Xavery Rex he learned the magic of art, from Dr. Saltzman the lesson of true humanity.
When he was 15, he became an apprentice printer and then an artist to the one-time anarchist and printer Felix Yacubowitch. Between 1930 and 1932 he attended the Warsaw School of Art (now Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw). In some years, Herman enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and fell under the formative influence of Constant Permeke.
Josef Herman publicly presented his works for the first time in Warsaw in 1932. In 1938 he left his homeland for Belgium due to the mounting anti-Semitism, in advance of the Germany invasion and outbreak of World War II. Soon he moved to France and made it to the United Kingdom, arriving in Scotland and settling in Glasgow in 1940, where he would remain for four years.
While in Glasgow, Herman befriended the sculptor Benno Schotz, and also renewed his acquaintance with the painter Jankel Adler. In 1942 he learned through the Red Cross that his family had been destroyed in the Nazi holocaust. Right before the news, he had begun a series of drawings of Jewish life in Poland. Then he transmuted this tragedy into a celebration of Jewish themes and memories, a kind of visual autobiography.
In 1943 Herman moved to London, where he held his first exhibition at the Reid and Lefevre Gallery, shared with L. S. Lowry. The following year he visited Ystradgynlais in the Swansea valley. For the next eleven years, Josef Herman lived in Ystradgynlais and painted the miners. He was later quoted as saying: "I stayed here because I found all I required. I arrived here a stranger for a fortnight; the fortnight became 11 years." He was quickly accepted into the community and nicknamed Joe Bach. The works he subsequently produced made him widely-known in Britain.
Josef Herman did not paint the miners at work in the pit, he usually captured them in the canteen or walking home, exhausted after their labours. Herman was a cunning and perceptive portraitist, but he rarely accepted any commissions. For a decade the miner was his principal subject, but not his only one. Apart from fishermen and peasants at work, he also depicted ballet dancers and sportsmen (playing football, tennis, or snooker).
Although his reputation grew rapidly in the 1950s, not everything was well with Herman as his health suffered from the damp Welsh climate. Over the next decade Josef Herman visited Israel, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1951 he received a commission to create a mural for the Festival of Britain. In 1955 he moved to Suffolk. That year he had a joint exhibition with L. S. Lowry and Nehemiah Azaz at the Wakefield City Art Gallery. There were retrospectives in 1956 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, in Glasgow in 1975, and at Camden Arts Centre in London in 1980.
In the mid-1960s Herman found he could not work, as during that period he suffered from severe depression. Herman went to London in 1972, where he stayed until his death. He drew in pencil and ink, worked rapidly in watercolour and mixed media. He read widely, particularly the autobiographies of artists, and also wrote himself. His first book, Related Twilights, was published in 1975. Herman was also famous for his internationally acclaimed collection of African miniature sculptures.
Josef Herman was a highly regarded realist painter who had a great influence on contemporary art, particularly in the United Kingdom. The artist received a gold medal for his services to Welsh Art by the Royal National Eisteddfod in Llanelly in 1962. In 1981 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to British Art.
In 2004 the Josef Herman Foundation was established in Ystradgynlais, to honour Josef Herman and his legacy. In 2010 Michael Waters produced a play, The Secret of Belonging, about Josef Herman and his years in Ystradgynlais. It was staged at the National Theatre Wales.
Herman's works are held in numerous British collections, including the Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow; the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff; the Tate collection and the British Museum, London; Birmingham City Art Gallery; The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Leeds City Art Gallery; the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; the City Art Gallery, Bristol; and Aberdeen Art Gallery.
Mother and Child
Three Welsh Miners
The Washerwomen
Vineyards in the Autumn
Snooker Players
Digging for Roots
Men at Table
Autumn Idyll
Harvest Scene
Miners Singing
The Gardener
Pruning the Vines
Three Mexican Women
In the Canteen
Field Workers
Women on the Shore
Nude
Two Indian Women
Overlooking the Valley
Seated Man
Scene in Cool Twilight
Scene from Burgundy (grape pickers)
Miners
Man and Cart
Leading the cart
The Cart Horse together with 3 further pen and ink studies by the same hand
Standing Man with Spade together with 3 further ink and watercolour sketches by the same hand
On the Road
Man with dog by the sea
Going to work
Man and Donkey
Herman was a follower of Judaism.
Josef Herman became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1990.
Herman was a generous and charming man, he was much loved by a wide circle of his friends. Usually dressed in brown cords, topped with a white lab coat when in the studio, he was a man of few worldly needs.
In 1942 Josef Herman met and married Catriona MacLeod, who was also an artist. She suffered a mental breakdown at the birth of a stillborn child. Early in 1955, Herman met Dr. Eleanor Marie (Nini) Ettlinger, who became his model and soon his mistress. Herman divorced his first wife in 1960, and on March 11, 1961, he remarried Nini Ettlinger. In 1966 the Hermans' infant daughter died. Josef Herman became suicidal and was given electroconvulsive therapy and drug treatment, recovering only gradually.
