My father Josef Herman had two very different careers. He spent most of the war in Glasgow painting and drawing Jewish subjects from the world of his childhood just as it was being destroyed by the Nazis. After he moved to south Wales, Josef found a new subject and a completely new voice as an artist: coal miners at work and at rest and their families in rich new colours, dark browns, gold, red and copper. Despite the terrible loss of his family during the Holocaust, he was the kindest and most loving of fathers and the most generous of friends.
I grew up briefly in Suffolk until my family returned to London in the mid-1970s. After university, I worked as a TV producer for twenty years and then as a freelance writer, writing nearly 1500 articles, mostly about Jewish literature and culture and the experience of Jewish refugees in Britain and their huge impact on British culture from the 1930s to the present day.
Artist Josef Herman RA’s son David Herman Ben Uri art museum 2012
David Herman talks about his father Josef Herman RA at the exhibition at the Ben Uri art museum
Josef Herman’s painting ‘Refugees’: son David Herman’s reflections at Ben Uri exhibition
Hear David Herman talk about his father Josef Herman’s telling painting ‘Refugees’.
‘Polish Exhibition: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain’, 28 June – 17 September 2017.
benuri.org.uk