Publisher's Synopsis
A garment worker and slipper manufacturer with no training in art, Morris Hirshfield was never expected to make history. Against all odds, his wildly stylized paintings of female figures, often nude, animals, and landscapes became internationally known in the 1940s. Admired by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and the French surrealists, his peak moment of visibility occurred in 1943, when the Museum of Modern Art mounted a one-man show of his work. The exhibition was widely reviewed - though mostly reviled - by the press, who jeeringly crowned Hirshfield 'Master of the Two Left Feet' for his tendency to display the female body in that unorthodox fashion. After the artist's death in 1946, his work was largely forgotten, but in 'Master of the Two Left Feet', art historian Richard Meyer rediscovers Hirshfield for twenty-first-century audiences.
