This is the first monograph on Ernest Zobole (1927-99), an artist whose output over a fifty-year period was truly extraordinary.

Zobole was born to immigrant parents from southern Italy in the heart of the Rhondda Valley, which had become world famous for its coal. He took that place, with its very particular geography and community, as the primary inspiration for his original and imaginative images.

His work relates to that of Bonnard, Chagall, Dubuffet, David Jones, Ceri Richards, Van Gogh, American colour-field painting, pop art and Sienese painting. Similarly, there are affinities with the vision of film makers Jacques Tati and Jean Cocteau and writers Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka.

The cumulative effect of Zobole's imaging is revelatory because his pictures go far beyond local and even national concerns, and surely establish him as an artist of European sensibility and standing.

Ceri Thomas is Research Fellow and Curator of University of Glamorgan Art Collections specialising in the post-war visual culture of south Wales. An award-winning artist and art historian, he curated the touring exhibition 'Ernest Zobole: a retrospective'.