User:Artist Louis/sandbox

USERSPACE: DRAFT - THE FOLLOWING IS AN ENTRY-IN-PROGRESS. PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE IN WIKIPEDIA YET (William Hirshman - william.hirshman@gmail.com)

Bold textLouis P. Hirshman

Louis P. Hirshman (1905-1986) was an American artist famous for his use of "found objects" for collages of well-known celebrities and politicians from the 1930s to the 1960s. These "constructions," created using everyday items (once referred to as "art from the ashcan"1, were done on flat boards. While Hirshman's first period largely involved painting, his second period - and arguably most popular period - from circa 1935 to 1965) was the witty use of everyday items -- exploited for their shapes and/or relation to the subject -- in more than 25 caricatures of many well-known figures of the times. Among them were:

-Groucho Marx in 1937 at the top of his movie fame (description) -pre-World War II Adolph Hitler in 1937 (description) -an homage to movie great Charlie Chaplin in 1957 (description) -pre-assassination President John F. Kennedy in 1963 (description) -Cuban president and Kennedy nemesis Fidel Castro in 1963 (description) -The Beatles (description)

In 1977 (?), the Philadelphia Museum of Art purchased a 1940 caricature of mathematical genius Alfred Einstein (description), perhaps his most well-known creation.

Though perhaps earning him less notoriety, Hirshman started shifting into his third period in 1963, which lasted until his death in 1986, creating more than 80 depictions of everyday life, recognizable motifs and still lifes. The constructions include:

-The Hangover (description) -Cat on a Fence (description) -The Duel (description -The Storm.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE Hirshman was born in 1905 (although there are conflicting documents concerning the exact date and year) in the western Russia, now Ukraine. He emigrated to the United States with his mother and several of his eight siblings in approximately 1909. Except for a stint in the US Army during World War II, stationed in San Antonio, Texas, Hirshman lived all of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He joined the Sketch Artists Club in 19??. While working daily in his home-based studio in West Philadelphia, he was employed as an art teacher in 1950 by the highly respected Fleisher Art Memorial2, a free art school with evening and Saturday classes, where he was appointed faculty director in 1967, serving until his retirement in 197?. Among his colleagues were Frank Gasparro, designer of the Susan B. Anthony US silver dollar and the Lincoln memorial on the back of the one-cent coin; Jo Gerson; Max Gottlieb; Frank P. Louchheim; and Mac Fisher

-Graphic Sketch Club -poster Library of Congress -Movie, The Story of a Nobody -birth