Elsa in a Mexican Hat

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 has 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.

Nuremberg, Germany