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Binding the Sheaves

Artist Josef Herman (Warsaw, Poland, 1911 - 2000)

Date1955

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings

DimensionsOverall: Height: 40.6 cm, Width: 50.6 cm
Frame: Height: 58.7 cm, Width: 68.7 cm

AcquisitionPurchased in 1956 with income from the Macdonald Bequest.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG002748

Keywords

About MeJosef Herman who grew up in Warsaw, left Poland in 1938 for Brussels, where he discovered the work of the Belgian expressionists and soon he too came to concentrate on expressing emotion rather than beauty in his work.

In 1940, Herman arrived in Glasgow and four years later moved to a Welsh mining village. He developed his technique and his expressionist powers with numerous sketches and finished oil paintings of miners and their families which made him one of the most highly regarded artists of the 1950s. In contrast to his prolific output of drawings, his slow, yet elaborate painting technique gave his work a richness and almost sculptural depth.

Always interested in the dignity of labour, both industrial and rural, and the depths of the human spirit, Herman expressed himself in simplified shapes and vivid colours, in this work to depict field workers binding wheat sheaves.