It is always exciting to find a diary that has been missing for years. This is exactly what happened to Josef Herman. A few months ago he stumbled on a pile of drawings during a 'clearing session' in his London studio - drawings which are a diary of his childhood in Poland.
They date from the time he first arrived in this country, in 1940. He was very lonely then, living in Glasgow and isolated not only because he was a refugee in a strange city, but also because of his inability to communicate in English.
Being an accomplished artist, however, his ability to draw was the lifebelt that kept him afloat on a sea of memories the essential survival kit for any displaced person.
What is a memory? Is it a fragment of the imagination, like a dream, or is it an accurate account of the past? Memories play tricks by being both. In Herman's case they were romanticised, far removed from the harsh and drab reality of his native Warsaw, where he was born in 1911 into the family of a cobbler.
He poured himself into these memories, capturing the fabric of his distant life. This was a time when Herman painted solely Jewish themes. He drew his family, his memories of street musicians, the personalities of the street where he lived in Warsaw. He recorded, in drawings, the singing voices. He illustrated from memory for he had no books - stories by Peretz and Sholem Alcichem.
It was also the first time he did ink washes, achieving the effect of that atmosphere that has been a characteristic of his work ever since. These are the drawings which he recently found in his studio, and they were shown at the Ben Uri Gallery, London in November 1984 for the first time. This is their first showing in Glasgow.
The exhibition comes during a particularly successful period for Herman, the Tate having exhibited a number of his works in the Hard Won Image exhibition. He was also featured prominently in another remarkable show, The Forgotten Fifties.
His range is wide not only geographically - after Scotland, he settled in South Wales for eleven years, before moving to Suffolk and subsequently to London, where he now lives but in terms of subject matter, too.
The central theme, however, has always been the portrayal of working people - Scottish fishermen, Welsh miners, Burgundian and Mexican peasants, all of whom he has drawn or painted in a monumental and emotional way. And although his brushwork is broad, paying little regard to detail, he always captures the essence of his subjects.
Herman's work incorporates many ingredients - the strong expressiveness of realism, coupled with an optimistic, romantic strain and, above all, a humanism firmly rooted in his identity.
These drawings, these memories of his Jewish childhood, will be shared by many others who were refugees. Just as Roman Vishniac's Vanished World exhibition evoked a strong, widespread response, so is this exhibition having a similar emotional reaction. It is a nostalgic journey into the past by a master with a magic touch.
As Josef Herman has movingly written "I was drawn to depict all I could remember [of life in Warsaw] as faithfully as a chronicler, though always in colours and scenes that also expressed my own nostalgia for a vanishing past and a deep sense of sympathy for the millions of Jews who had remained in Eastern Europe and who were being systematically starved, humiliated and extinguished".
