Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered

Early in its history, the Museum of Modern Art embraced self-taught artists and African and Meso-American art almost as ardently as it did sophisticated vanguardists. What was then unabashedly referred to as “primitive art” was seen as sharing modernism’s disregard for traditional aesthetic conventions. In the 1930s and early 1940s, MoMA mounted such exhibitions as “Modern Primitives: Artists of the People”; “African Negro Art” and “American Sources of Modern Art (Aztec, Mayan, Incan)”; as well as shows devoted to paintings by Henri Rousseau, sculptures by William Edmondson (the first Black self-taught artist to exhibit at MoMA) and an elaborately decorated shoeshine stand made by a Sicilian immigrant. In 1943, perhaps seeking an American Henri Rousseau, Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum’s director, organized “The Paintings of Morris Hirshfield”—all 30 works completed by the Polish-born former tailor and boudoir slipper maker since he began to paint at age 65.