Died in Jerusalem in 1997.

Education
1939 Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, with Mordechai Ardon

Teaching
1964-81 Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, drawing.

My cousin Joseph Hirsch, the artist / By Dorothea Shefer Vanson

“A few years ago I was asked to prepare the text for a website for Joseph Hirsch (1920-1997), a highly regarded Israeli artist who also happened to be my mother’s first cousin (double first cousin, actually, as two brothers had married two sisters in pre-WW1 Germany, one of those couples eventually becoming my grandparents).

Joseph was always called ‘Boujik’ in the family, apparently because a childhood nursemaid had been enchanted by his sweet appearance and nature. When I knew him he was a tall, angular man with the typical ironic sense of humor that I associate with ‘Yekkes,’ and those of my family in particular.

I collected material from various sources, catalogues from his exhibitions, reviews by art critics, as well as recollections by former students and prepared a text that I thought was suitable, but unfortunately the website never came into being.
Now the Israel Museum is preparing a project of its own, giving leading Israeli artists a place in Wikipedia, and I was happy to hear that Hirsch, as his students called him, was to be included in it.

Artist, philosopher, and teacher—Joseph Hirsch was all of these, according to art critics. His paintings express many aspects of his complex worldview, but above all they convey his ability to tease out the essence of the material world around him—as embodied in both people and objects—in order to express its innermost poetry and deeper, metaphysical significance.
Many of Hirsch’s pictures convey his own idiosyncratic interpretation of the material universe and the individual’s relation to it.

Several works by Joseph Hirsch, one of Israel’s foremost artists, have been purchased by leading museums, including the British Museum and the Israel Museum.
Gifted both as a teacher and as a painter, upon his death he left a legacy of hundreds of devoted and admiring pupils.

Hirsch’s paintings, the vast majority of which are monochrome compositions on paper, reveal a world outside and beyond the ordinary, humdrum one inhabited by mankind.
A consummate draftsman, Hirsch contrived to imbue the outer form of objects and people with their innermost essence. This applied as much to everyday objects, such as a vase of flowers, a rug, or a doll in his still lives, as to the various models who posed for him.

Joseph Hirsch was born in 1920 in the mining town of Beuthen, Silesia, then part of Germany, to an orthodox Jewish family. His interest in painting and drawing was evident from early childhood, and his parents helped and encouraged him in cultivating this talent.
He was thirteen years old when Hitler came to power in 1933, and the anti-Jewish atmosphere, with the restrictions imposed by the Nuremberg Laws, overshadowed his teenage years.

Hirsch immigrated to what was then Palestine in 1939, and attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. The artist Hermann Struck, one of the founders of Bezalel, was sufficiently impressed with Hirsch’s promise to secure him a Certificate, the precious document which entitled the recipient to immigrate to Palestine, then under the British Mandate.
After working as a sign-painter for the British authorities and later in newly-nascent Israel, Hirsch was invited to join the staff of the Bezalel Academy in 1964, continuing to teach there until his death.

Even in his final, mortal illness Boujik retained his characteristic dry sense of humor. A former student who visited him in hospital recounts that he commented to the nurse who entered his room, “I can see by your sadistic smile that you’ve come to give me my morning injection,” occasioning hearty laughter on her part.

Boujik died in Jerusalem in November 1997, aged 77”.

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is a freelance writer and translator who lives in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion.
This article initially appeared in the AJR Journal, published by the Association of Jewish Refugees. 

Solo exhibitions

1960 Marc Chagall Artists’ House, Haifa
1962 Artists’ House, Jerusalem (together with Abraham Yaskil and and Yaakov (Kuba) Loebel)
1967 Artists’ House, Jerusalem (together with Yitzhak Pugacz and Yvette Szczupak-Thomas)
1971 The small gallery, Jerusalem
1974 “Gray paintings”, Yodfat Gallery, Tel Aviv
1975 “Drawings”, Armon Gallery, Jerusalem
1976 “Images”, Artists’ House, Jerusalem
1979 “Rreality and fantasy”, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
1981 Joseph Hirsch, City Hall, Langen, Germany
1982 “New Works”, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
1983 Joseph Hirsch, Ahuva Pinkas Gallery, Tel Aviv
1984 “Still Life”, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
1988
Joseph Hirsch, Mishkenot Sha’ananim gallery, Jerusalem
Joseph Hirsch, Sara Kishon Gallery, Tel Aviv
Joseph Hirsch, at the Synagogue Gelnhausen, Germany
1990
“Joseph Hirsch Drawings”, Wilfrid Israel Museum of Art, Kibbutz Hazorea
“Joseph Hirsch Drawings”, Yad Lebanim Museum Petach Tikva
“Humanism of the Defect”, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
1992 “Joseph Hirsch Drawings”, Open Museum, Tefen industrial center (curator: Natan Zach)
1993
“Nature is not silent”, Herzliya Museum of Art;
Avraham Baron Art Gallery, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
“Humanism of the defect”, Old House Gallery, Seligenstadt, Germany
1994 “Humanism of the Defect”, The Culture House, Langen, Germany
1996 “Human Being is Always Hidden”, International Convention Center, Jerusalem
1997 “Joseph Hirsch: New Works”, Yakar Center, Jerusalem
2001 “Joseph Hirsch Retrospective”, Artists’ House, Jerusalem; The Art Gallery, University of Haifa; The Rehovot Municipal Art Gallery (2002)
2006 “Nature is not silent”, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
2007 “Works on Paper”, Yair Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2011 “Through the Mask”, Yair Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

Group exhibitions

1964 “Exhibition of graphics”, Artists House, Haifa
1965 “Exhibition of the drawing”, The Museum of Modern Art, Haifa
1967 “Image and imagination”, Tel Aviv Art Museum (Curator: Haim Gamzu)
1970 Bezalel’s teachers exhibition, Artists House, Jerusalem
1971 “Spring exhibition of Jerusalem artists”, Jerusalem Artists' House
1974 “Autumn Exhibition”, Museum Yad Lebanim Petach Tikva
1982 “Figure”, Tel Aviv Artists' House
1983 “Edge of the iceberg No. 2”, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1985 “Joseph Hirsch hosts”, Artists House, Jerusalem
1986 “A hundred works on paper”, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1987, 1988 “New Bezalel”, Artists House, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art (curator: Gideon Efrat)
1988 “Black on white”, works on paper, Ben-Ari Museum, Bat Yam
1989 “Portrait”, Omanut La’am”, curated by Zvi Tadmor
Still Life, Sara Kishon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1994 “Identity, Artist, Place”, Artists House, Jerusalem. Curator: Tzvi Tolkovsky
1998 “Immersed in water, Immersed in light”: A hundred years of watercolors in Israel, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Awards

1980 Israeli artist - La Cité internationale des arts, Paris
1983 Jerusalem Prize for Painting and Sculpture
1987 Israel Discount Bank Prize in 1987, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1988 Mordechai Ish-Shalom's Prize for life achievement, Jerusalem
         Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem

Joseph Hirsch's works are included, among others, in the collections of the British Museum, London, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem and in Tefen Open Museum.

Additional Information:

Joseph Hirsch – Retrospective is the artist’s first posthumous exhibition

Joseph Hirsch – Retrospective is the artist’s first posthumous exhibition.
Despite the compelling title, from a graphic oeuvres panning several thousands works on paper, only 220 drawings were selected for display. The present exhibition strives to provide an introduction to a large and comprehensive body of work, while weaving it into the Israeli and European contexts where it belongs. Naturally, the exhibition is historical, chronological and didactic in nature. However, Hirsch’s art does not belong to a definite time and style; even now it is perceived as art which is timeless. Most of his drawings elicit discontent and conduce contemplation, despite – or perhaps due to – their visual perfection and outstanding execution. Most of the works are drawings in pen, brush and ink, with occasional touches of graphite, watercolor or chalk; they are the product of meticulous observation, a virtuoso touch, and fine irony, at times verging on sarcasm.

The totality of Hirsch’s work and his status continue to raise questions concerning the artist’s role in society, the function of art, and the viewer’s position. The fact that he chose to engage exclusively in drawing, creating small-scale, monochromatic works, in a style reminiscent, to some observers, of academic, historic and classical drawing, exempted him over the years from competition with the trends and movements preoccupying his contemporaries. This choice ranked him along with other artists in Israel, older than he, who engaged exclusively in drawing, among them Anna Ticho, Leopold Krakauer, and Osias Hofstatter. The latter was also the only Israeli artist whom Hirsch regarded as a confidant, someone who understood what all the others could not see, and the two men had great respect for each other.

Still and all, Hirsch’s oeuvre is not classical, let alone academic. Hirsch himself often detected in it an unconventional, subversive element, a revolutionary act of sorts stemming from an understanding of historical development. By virtue of his origin, education and fate, he belonged to a large group of artists who were brought up on the rudiments of German Art and subsequently expelled therefrom. During the 1930s, with the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany and Austria, many German artists, scholars, and philosophers were scattered to all corners of the world, bringing to their new countries the traditions, values and insights which stimulated the Weimar Republic. One of these was the long tradition of drawing, where the ability to sketch from nature, from observation, is a self-evident, basic requirement an artist must meet. Concurrently, an ethos of work in black-and-white, possessing an ethical-critical tint, emerged in the 20th century throughout the world of German culture. The immense impact of German painting, and mainly Expressionism in all its manifestations and variations, on the consciousness of artists throughout the world derives, first and foremost, from the intensity of expression triggered by a drawing skill, as it was manifested in chalk and charcoal drawings, woodcuts, etchings, and lithographs.

The current exhibition sets out to provide, for the first time, a more comprehensive perspective on Joseph Hirsch’s art. It sheds light on his early work from the early 1950s, traces its evolution throughout the 1970s, reaching its peak during the last years of his life. It presents a wide range of techniques and approaches, many works that have never been shown before, studies, quick sketches and laborious drawings, rich in tone and visual resonance. Furthermore, this is the first exhibition in which the artist’s work is being presented not by the artist’s own choice.