Morris Hirshfield

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Morris Hirshfield (born April 10, 1872 in Congress Poland , then the Russian Empire ; died July 26, 1946 in Brooklyn , New York City ) was an American manufacturer and primitive painter.

Life

Hirshfield was born into a Jewish family in Russian Poland, near what was then the German border. As a teenager, he made a sculpture for the local synagogue . At the age of 18 he emigrated to New York and worked there for the first few years as a worker in a women's clothing company. In 1902 he and his brother founded the EZ Walk Manufacturing Company , which manufactured shoes and employed up to 300 people. He left the company in 1917 for health reasons.

Act

Girl with Pigeons (1942)

Hirshfield began painting at the age of 65. Today (2012) his works are counted among the primitives by art critics . In 1939, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) showed two of his paintings in its exhibition The Unknowns . In 1943 he had a solo exhibition at MoMA which was very controversial. Today his paintings are owned by the MoMA and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris .

In 2015 the Museum Folkwang in Essen showed some of his works in the collective exhibition The Shadow of the Avant-garde - Rousseau and the Forgotten Masters .

Works

  • 1937: girls on the beach
  • 1937: Angora cat
  • 1940: Tiger
  • 1940: girl in the mirror
  • 1941: four cats (mother cat and three kittens)
  • 1941: Inseparable friends
  • 1942: American beauty
  • 1942: girl with pigeons
  • 1944: Stage Beauties - Tryptich
  • 1945: the artist and his model

literature

  • R. Zuch: Hirshfield, Morris . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 73, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023178-6 , p. 354 f.
  • Sidney Janis : Morris Hirshfield (1872–1946): American Primitive Painter , exhibition catalog Sidney Janis Gallery, New York 1965

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hirshfield, Morris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Poland , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1946
Place of death Brooklyn , New York