Josef Herman, was a highly regarded Polish-British painter who influenced contemporary art, particularly in the United Kingdom. He was part of a generation of central and eastern European Jewish refugee artists who emigrated to escape Nazi persecution. He saw himself as part of a tradition of European figurative artists who painted working people, a tradition that included Courbet, Millet and Van Gogh, Kathe Kollwitz and the Flemish Expressionist Constant Permeke. For eleven years he lived in Ystradgynlais, a mining community in South Wales.
