Stefan Hirsch (1899 - 1964). Stefan Hirsch was an American artist. Many of his paintings have the hard edges, smooth surfaces, and simplified forms of the precisionists and their typical subjects, cityscapes and industrial scenes, are sometimes also his, but in general his works have an emotional element and, as one critic as said, take on an otherworldly tone that sets them apart. In addition to work showing a personal version of precisionism, he produced paintings, drawings, and prints in the social realist, Mexican muralist, and surrealist styles as well as still lifes, portraits, and landscapes that defy easy classification. His work achieved critical recognition from 1919 onward, has been widely collected, and is today found in many American museums including the Phillips Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery. Hirsch was born in Nuremberg, Germany, to parents who were American citizens of German heritage. He studied law and art at the University of Zürich and was there exposed to artists associated with the Dada movement. When he was 20 his family emigrated to New York and there he was befriended by the teacher and art patron, Hamilton Easter Field. Along with the painter, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and sculptor, Robert Laurent, he spent several summer sessions at Field's school in Ogunquit, Maine. His first appearance in an exhibition was in 1919 at the Society of Independent Artists in New York. At the time of his first one-man show in 1927 a critic for the New York Sun was surprised Hirsch had not been given one before. His work stood out when it was exhibited and was collected widely, this critic wrote. He said it was modern but not revolutionary and its quality was undisputed. Hirsch's subjects at this time were mainly buildings: structures without human presence. Critics described his paintings as cool, reserved, and somewhat aloof. The critic for the Sun said they showed a moment when everything stops. Their design was flat. The colors were muted and harmonious with a purity and clarity of color like things painted on porcelain or silk. They possessed an intellectual austerity but were nonetheless said to convey the essential character of a scene. Hirsch's drawing, House, of 1920 shows some influences of Cézanne and the cubists in its juxtaposed panels and emphasis on the two-dimensional surface of the paper. Its spare, geometric design was typical of his style during this decade. His painting, Lower Manhattan, of either 1920 or 1921, is one of his best known pieces. It possesses the essential flatness of most of his output and shows his artistic skill in its overall design, coloration and balanced tonal relations. Hirsch's paintings and drawings in the 1920s were not all in the manner of his urban landscapes. His 1919 drawing of flowers on a table with note cards and knife is realistic with a tonal balance and clarity that would later be recognized as distinguishing his best work. In 1924 he showed a monumental nude at the Bourgeois Gallery in New York and, that same year, he made a lithograph showing the heads of three women in hats and coats. A rural landscape, Pastoral Scene, New England, painted in 1926, contrasts sharply with his cityscapes in its rounded contours and blue-and red-toned pallette. In 1927 he showed a circus scene at that year's Salons of America exhibition which a critic found to be witty and more flexible than his mathematically exact paintings. In his solo exhibit at the Bourgeois Galleries that same year he showed three portraits. In 1928 he showed a painting called Lilies of the Valley in an exhibition at the Downtown Galleries and the following year he produced a whimsical drawing called Stuart Davis Mailbox which shows the back of a woman holding a small American flag beside a mechanical letterbox contraption with human features, in profile. At about the same time he painted a rural landscape, Horse Pasture, described as showing clean outline and peaceful horizons. In 1922 Hirsch was a founding director and recording secretary of the Salons of America. Hamilton Easter Field created the Salons as an alternative to the Society of Independent Artists which he felt unfairly was giving preferential treatment to some of its members. Hirsch would remain as a director and would continue to show at the Salons exhibitions until 1936. In 1927 Hirsch was given his first solo exhibition. This event took place at the Bourgeois Gallery, New York. Two years later, with Robert Laurent, Wood Gaylor, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Hirsch established the Field Foundation. Using a legacy from Hamilton Easter Field, the foundation was run by artists to help other artists by purchasing their work.