Ben Uri acquires rare Josef Herman painting lost for more than 60 years
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
Ben Uri acquires "extremely rare" early work by Polish émigré painter which was thought to have been lost
Josef Herman, Refugees (circa 1941)© Estate of Josef Herman, all rights reservedRefugees was painted in around 1941, when the artist was living in Glasgow after fleeing Warsaw and then Brussels in the face of the Nazi invasion of Europe.
Depicting a Jewish family fleeing the artist's home city of Warsaw, the painting draws strongly on Herman’s eastern European Jewish heritage and engages specifically with Jewish themes, as well as his expressionist roots.
Herman was born into a poor Jewish working-class family and trained at the Warsaw School of Art between 1930 and 1932. He established a life-long interest in portraying working people, co-founding the left-wing artistic group known as the Phrygian Bonnet.
Alongside fellow Polish-Jewish refugee Jankel Adler and sculptor Benno Schotz, he contributed to a remarkable artistic renaissance in Glasgow between 1940 and 1943, spearheaded by the Scottish colourist JD Fergusson and his dancer wife, Margaret Morris.
But the period was a dark one for Herman and the painting – part of a series known as the ‘Memory of Memories’ came after a tumultuous six-year period during which he was forced to flee across four European cities in the face of the Nazi invasion of Europe and the brutal anti-Semitism it entailed.
Sarah MacDougall, the Head of Collections at the gallery, said curators were “delighted” with the acquisition of a painting from a period when Herman’s work was at its most experimental, calling his use of colour "strikingly imaginative".
“These works are extremely rare since Herman later rejected what he perceived to be the influence of Chagall, recording in his diary that he burned the majority of them in 1948. Since this painting was not previously in the public domain, it was not known that it had survived," she added.
Refugees employs a number of motifs that Herman used to evoke Warsaw during this period, particularly the dominant blue palette and the rising moon. The cat with a dangling mouse symbolises the plight of the refugee family.
“The work represents not only the experience of Jewish refugees, but all refugees, and therefore has a universal significance,” suggested MacDougall.
And as with much of Herman’s work of this period, the sense of tragedy is heightened by a heart-breaking personal back story.
“In 1940 Herman began a series of works known as the ‘Memory of Memories’, specifically evoking his lost Warsaw,” explained MacDougall. “After learning [after this work was painted] in 1942 that his entire family had been killed in the Warsaw Ghetto, the series darkened to include images of violence and loss.”
In 1943 Herman moved to London, bringing the series to a close, and held his first London exhibition with a then-little known artist called LS Lowry.
The following year, after a chance visit to the Welsh mining village of Ystradgynlais, he experienced an artistic epiphany, and made his home among this close-knit, hard-working community for the next 11 years – returning to his artistic roots with depictions of working class communities.
Refugees joins eight works by Josef Herman held by the Ben Uri, including two works on paper from his important early years: the pen-and-ink sketch Musicians, from around 1940 to 1943, and a portrait drawing of the Yiddish poet, Avram Stencl.
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