Morris
Hirschfield

Self-taught American Jewish painter, born in Russian Poland. He painted nudes, landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, and many depictions of animals, both wild and domestic. He tried to follow academic art conventions, but eventually found an unconventional style of his own, which fully corresponded to the definition of naive art. During his short creative career (he began to paint at the age of 65, and lived 74 years), he created 77 works. Most of them belong to the collection of New York's MoMA (an acronym for "Museum of Modern Art") and Paris's National Museum of Art Moderne.

Morris Hirschfield, being an elderly self-taught artist both in terms of technique and familiarity with the achievements of fine art, created a completely original painting style. Art historians discern motifs from Ancient Egypt, links with the folk art of Polynesia and Africa, medieval and pre-Renaissance art, and echoes of a particular genre - heraldic images and signs.

Morris, trying to imitate the art of realism, as if there was no modernism and surrealism, bitterly admitted that "could not fulfill what the mind demanded. The lack of special training, the inability to master drawing, volumes and shadows led to the creation of an original style in which objects hover somewhere between myth and reality, surrounded by carefully written out details of the background.

He painted women who looked like magnificent idols to be worshipped. In doing so, he avoided the use of nature and worked from photographs and from memory.

He created animals and pets with quite human "faces" that statically "hover" on disproportionately small paws over bushes and grass. More often it is not a single animal, but a whole "happy family", always playful and cheerful, enjoying each other's company. The patterns on the bodies of zebras and leopards, which resemble densely packed sausages, are unbelievably decorative, just like the ornamental nature that frames them. For example, the schematic "herringbone" pattern for bushes and trees used most often is very similar to a stencil pattern.

Dominant in Hirschfield's technique was the use of curvilinear shapes for the image objects themselves, which are (most likely subconsciously) reflected in the undulating landscape.

Bright colours in the most unexpected combinations, an unusual technique that had its origins in the experience of working with fabrics and in Morris the artist's almost painful meticulousness, and a lack of interest in conventional subjects constituted all the charm of Hirschfield's naive work.

The notorious "two left feet" of the models become the author's highlight, emphasizing the archaic features peculiar to his paintings and strongly reminiscent of children's drawings or primitive art. All the more so because he himself explained that the slippers he had been working on for decades were made using a single foot pattern.

(Source: https://thesketchline.com/authors/morris-xirshfild/)