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Joseph Hirsch was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, and teacher of German-Jewish descent. His work, most frequently associated with Social Realism, is also connected with the Regionalism movement of the 1930s and 1940s. After he graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, Hirsch moved to New York and studied with Ashcan School painter George Luks. It was Luks who introduced Hirsch to Social Realism. In the late 1930s Hirsch worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to create murals. During World War II his paintings of soldiers were used for War Bonds posters. In 1944, he became an artist correspondent for the U.S. Medical Corps in North Africa and Italy. After the war, while working as a commercial artist and portrait painter, he also began to produce lithographs based on his own paintings.Label Type
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Much of Joseph Hirsch’s work conveys themes of civil corruption and racial injustice. His depictions of war time and social issues connect his work with the Social Realism movement, which portrayed contemporary life as a means of social or political commentary. In this lithograph, Hirsch captures an everyday moment in the life of an African American man, who lays his head down on a table, ostensibly during his short lunch break. The utter exhaustion, apparent in the figure’s slouched posture that is illuminated by Hirsch’s skillful shading and his cropped composition, evokes empathy for this laborer. Centering the struggles of working class subjects to bring political attention to their cause was a goal of Social Realist artists. The mass production and affordability of lithographic prints such as Lunch Hour–which is one of the first produced by Hirsch–enabled more people to access the images and thus engage with the messages of these artworks.