Morris Hirshfield

1872-1946 · Brooklyn, New York, USA

A retired Brooklyn slipper manufacturer took up painting at 65, produced 77 canvases, and landed a solo show at MoMA so controversial it helped cost the director his job.

The life

Hirshfield was born in Poland in 1872 and emigrated to America at eighteen. He worked in a women’s coat factory, then built a successful business with his brother manufacturing coats and slippers, retiring in ill health in 1935. He began painting in 1937 and was championed by the dealer Sidney Janis, admired by Breton, Duchamp and Mondrian, and collected by Peggy Guggenheim. MoMA showed him in 1939 and gave him a solo exhibition in 1943; the press mocked him as the Master of Two Left Feet, and the backlash contributed to the demotion of director Alfred H. Barr Jr. Hirshfield died in 1946.

The work

Oil on canvas: monumental women in meticulously styled dresses, lions, tigers and birds, every surface worked like fabric by a man who had spent a lifetime cutting cloth, in radically flattened, symmetrical compositions. Just 77 paintings exist, held by MoMA, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Why we love them

The critics sneered at the two left feet. The surrealists, and time, took Hirshfield’s side.

Go deeper

• Morris Hirshfield at the Outsider Art Fair
• Morris Hirshfield on Wikipedia
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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