Joseph Hirsch: The Poetry of Sight

"Work from the general to the specific and from light to dark, avoid symmetry, and connect figure and background" – these are just some of the principles passed down by artist-draftsman Joseph Hirsch (1920–1997) to his students at the Bezalel School of Art. Hirsch, the youngest member of the German-Austrian school of drawing active in Israel, devoted his career to figurative drawing, despite finding himself in a minority position with the rise of conceptual and abstract art. The major theme of his poetic, and at times ironic art is humanity itself – man’s loneliness and alienation, his pathetic attempts to forge connections with others, and his forlorn efforts to understand his own fate.

Hirsch worked in ink on paper, in small-scale formats, focusing on portraiture and still-life. Within the clear boundaries he set himself, he created a visual language based on a methodical theory aiming to unite drawing from observation with emotional expression and geometric construction. He considered drawing an ongoing process that develops in stages, in which the sheet is comparable to a stage or platform on which an event unfolds. Among other things, he instructed his students to avoid repeating similar shapes or same-sized lines and to take note of secondary shapes in the background that echo central shapes in the foreground. His charismatic, humorous manner gained him an admiring and loyal following among generations of students.

Hirsch often portrayed figures seated in an armchair as if on a stage, many of them acquaintances, doing so with a gaze that penetrated body and soul. Despite his adherence to drawing from observation and his tendency to downplay the value of "made-up works," Hirsch's corpus always contained "drawings from memory." These works feature stylized figures, not entirely human, moving through shadowy spaces, seemingly performing a danse macabre or locked in eternal battle.

 

Exhibition and booklet made possible by the Hagit Lalo (née Shtriet) Memorial Fund, in honor of Avishai Yehonatan Freidman