Josef Herman: Belonging
Josef Herman’s work occupies a unique place within Welsh art, shaped by experiences of exile, survival and the search for connection. In this thought piece, Gwenllian Beynon, lecturer at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s Swansea College of Art, reflects on Herman’s journey to Wales and the sense of belonging he found in Ystradgynlais. Drawing on her involvement with the Josef Herman Art Foundation Cymru and the National Library of Wales, the piece explores how themes of community, memory and working life emerge across Herman’s practice, and how his artistic legacy continues to inform education, place and identity in Wales.
In art and design education, it’s important for our students to learn about a wide range of arts practitioners from different and diverse areas of practice. Information about Wales-based art is a focus of specialism that I share with students of all levels at UWTSD’s Swansea, College of Art. One such artist is the émigré/refugee artist from Poland, Josef Herman, who lived in Ystradgynlais in the Swansea Valley between 1945 and 1955, who became known for ‘his Expressionist depictions of Welsh coal miners’ (Thomas 2024), and the working people of the area produced in ways of making art that was not familiar in Welsh art during the 1950s.
Recently, I have been working on a resource with the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth – representing the Josef Herman foundation in Ystradgynlais, where I am a trustee; Swansea College of Art , where I lecture; and the collection of Herman’s art at the National Library of Wales. The aim of the resource is to provide some foundational knowledge about Herman and to provide connections to his art in the National Library of Wales collection. The theme of the resource is Belonging and included in the resource are links to Herman’s work that demonstrates this sense of belonging to a place, which he found in Wales and especially in Ystradgynlais - ‘I stayed here because I found all I required. I arrived here a stranger for a fortnight; the fortnight became 11 years.’ JHAFC. (2025).
After the Second World War, international modernism (Thomas, 2024) was developed in Wales by displaced artists, from other countries, who had to leave their homes due to the effects of the war. Artists such as Josef Herman left Poland due to the rising antisemitism in Warsaw in 1935. He travelled across Europe from Poland, finding refuge in various countries along the way. He eventually arrived in Glasgow in 1940, and it was here that he received a letter via the Red Cross to inform him that his family had been killed in the Warsaw Ghettos. He made work during this time, remembering his life in Poland, which was later exhibited and given the title of Memory of Memories in 1985. These paintings and drawings evoke a memory of his past that was no longer available to him, and this sense of memory and longing is powerfully visible in his art. Though Herman never continued with these themes, he continued to search for a visual voice and expression in his work, and he found this in Wales through both the Miners and the working people of the Swansea Valley. Herman’s journey through Europe brought him to Ystradgynlais and he found a sense of belonging there and a home. He was given the nick name Jo Bach, in Welsh ‘bach’ means both small (Herman was a short man) and a term of endearment.
In the National Library resource, the sense of belonging that Herman felt after losing everything, is demonstrated in some of the art from the library’s collection. These can be seen in the resource and include a family in a doorway where the mother sits holding a baby, looking up at the father with another child in the background. The relationship of the family to each other is clearly demonstrated in this simple pen and ink drawing (a favourite process that Herman used time and time again). Another image is of miners on the bus. One of the miners is carrying a baby in the Welsh siôl, a traditional way of carrying babies in Wales, where the baby is wrapped tightly to the adult’s body with a woollen shawl. The miners are evidently in animated conversation with each other. Another painting is of a mother and child, another important theme for Herman, made more poignant when we consider that Herman lost his mother and younger siblings in the ghettos. In this oil painting, Herman presents a mother also carrying a baby in a siôl.
The importance of Herman to Wales is that he became well known for drawing and painting the coal miners, the coal mining community and its people. ‘He does not tell us what Ystradgynlais and its people look like, but out of his feelings towards the place and its people, he creates a new world of form and shape and colour and tone.’ (Wakelin, 2018). These were themes and practices that he continued for the rest of his career after leaving Ystradgynlais until his death in 2000. His affiliation to Wales is a lasting legacy to the Ystradgynlais Community and continues to this day in the work of the Josef Herman Art Foundation Cymru, who look after an archive of Heman’s work based at the Welfare Hall in Ystradgynlais. The foundation focuses on the artist and aspects of Herman’s life, his art, human rights and education. These pillars of the foundation continue the connection of Herman to Wales and specifically to Ystradgynlais, forming a further sense of belonging in this legacy.
Link to resource.https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/education/learning-resources/josef-herman-belonging
JHAFC. (2025). Josef Herman - Josef Herman Foundation. [online] Available at: <http://josefhermanfoundation.org/about/josef-herman/> (Accessed October 2025).
Thomas, T. (2024) Bell and Armistead: the making of modern art in Wales. [online] Available at: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/bell-and-armistead-the-making-of-mod… (Accessed: October 2025).
Wakelin. P (2018) Then and now: 80 years of collecting contemporary art for Wales. [online] Available at https://artuk.org/discover/stories/then-and-now-80-years-of-collecting-… (Accessed July 2021)
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