MORRIS HIRSHFIELD

 

Morris Hirshfield (1872–1946)

"Nude at the Window", 1941. André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst e Leonora Carrington, em Nova York em 1942, estão representados diante de "Nude at the Window".

Morris Hirshfield foi um pintor polonês-americano. 

Ele "é considerado um dos artistas autodidatas mais aclamados pela crítica do século 20", segundo o J. Paul Getty Museum

Hirshfield was born in Poland, but emigrated to the United States at the age of eighteen. He found employment at a women's coat factory; later, he founded a business with his brother, first manufacturing women's coats, then women's slippers. He retired in 1935 due to failing health.

Hirshfield began to paint in 1937. He was soon championed by gallerist Sidney Janis, who had a great interest in self-taught artists. Janis included some of Hirshfield's works in a 1939 exhibition, Contemporary Unknown American Painters, and a 1942 book, They Taught Themselves: American Primitive Painters of the 20th Century. 

His painting found favor in surrealist circles; he was lauded by Andre Breton, and was a participant in the first American surrealist exhibition, First Papers of Surrealism, in 1942.

He received a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943. The show occasioned some negative criticism; Art Digest referred to Hirshfield as "The Master of Two Left Feet", and the bad press the show received figured into the demotion of MoMA's director, Alfred H. Barr Jr.

Hirschfield died in New York City in 1946.