THE JOSEF HERMAN ART FOUNDATION CYMRU IS LAUNCHED

A Unique opportunity to purchase drawings by the internationally renown artist Josef Herman
Labour Day this year is an appropriate launch date for a new education and arts foundation in memory of the internationally acclaimed Polish painter Josef Herman. It was sixty years ago, this year, that 'Joe Bach' first came to live in the small mining village of Ystradgynlais in the Swansea Valley. He had escaped from the Nazi invasion of Poland but lost his entire family to the concentration camps.
	Josef Herman portrait photograph by Bernard Mitchell

Herman once said of Ystradgynlais, "I stayed here because I found ALL I required. I arrived as a stranger for a fortnight. The fortnight became eleven years". Eventually, Herman was forced to leave the area for health reasons, but he never forgot the village and the people who had welcomed him so warmly into their community and inspired a wealth of work now highly valued by art lovers, collectors and critics.

Josef Herman died in 2000 and his friends and admirers in Ystradgynlais have set up the Foundation in his name to promote interest in his life and work and to encourage arts education initiatives within the area.

The Foundation will be launched at the Welfare Hall in Ystradgynlais on Saturday 1st of May at 7pm. The 1st of May, Labour Day, is an appropriate date as Josef Herman had a lifelong admiration for working people.

The evening will include readings from Herman's diaries of his stay in south Wales and songs from the Côr Cochian Caerdydd. It will also mark the opening of a special exhibition and auction of his drawings selected by Josef's widow Nini Herman from her collection. Drawings will be for sale from 6pm on the night in aid of the Josef Herman Art Foundation. The provenance of each drawing sold will be certified by Nini Herman.

A further coup for the Foundation was the exciting news that The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, who formally lived in Ystradgynlais, has agreed to be a patron of the foundation along with well-known painters Valerie Ganz and
Ozzi Rhys Osmond.

The images on this page are a small selection of the 70 available for purchase through the Foundation.
Further details and information can be obtained from Wynne Roberts at the Company Office, The Welfare, Brecon Road, Ystradgynlais, SA9 1JJ Tel: +44(0)1639 843163 (for International calls)

01639 843163 U.K. number