Up for
auction "Caricaturist" Al Hirschfeld Hand Signed 3x5 Card. This
item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their
Certificate of Authenticity. ES-2915 Albert
Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 –
January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best
known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. Al Hirschfeld was born in a two-story
duplex at 1313 Carr Street in St. Louis , and later moved with his family to New York City,
where he received his art training at the Art Students League of New
York . Following a divorce from Florence Ruth Hobby, in 1943, he
married Broadway actress/performer Dolly Haas . Haas died from ovarian cancer in 1994, aged 84.
They had one child, a daughter, Nina (b. 1945). In 1996, he married Louise
Kerz, a theatre historian. In 1924, Hirschfeld traveled to Paris and London,
where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. When he returned to the
United States, a friend, fabled Broadway press agent Richard Maney, showed one of Hirschfeld's
drawings to an editor at the New York Herald Tribune ,
which got Hirschfeld commissions for that newspaper and then, later, The New York Times . Hirschfeld's
style is unique, and he is considered to be one of the most important figures
in contemporary drawing and caricature, having influenced countless artists,
illustrators, and cartoonists. His caricatures were regularly drawings of pure
line in black ink, for which he used a genuine crow quill. Readers
of The New York Times and
other newspapers prior to the time they printed in color will be most familiar
with the Hirschfeld drawings that are black ink on white illustration board.
However, there is a whole body of Hirschfeld's work in color.[5] Hirschfeld's full-color paintings were
commissioned by many magazines, often as the cover. Examples are TV Guide , Life Magazine , American Mercury , Look Magazine , The New York Times
Magazine , The New Masses , and Seventeen Magazine . He also illustrated many books in color, most
notably among them Harlem As Seen By Hirschfeld , with text by
William Saroyan. He was commissioned by CBS to
illustrate a preview magazine featuring the network's new TV programming in
fall 1963. One of the programs was Candid Camera , and Hirschfeld's caricature of the show's
host Allen Funt outraged Funt so much he threatened to leave
the network if the magazine were issued.[ Hirschfeld prepared a
slightly different likeness, perhaps more flattering, but he and the network
pointed out to Funt that the artwork prepared for newspapers and some other
print media had been long in preparation and it was too late to withdraw it. Funt
relented but insisted that what could be changed would have to be. Newsweek ran a squib on the controversy. Hirschfeld started
young and continued drawing to the end of his life, thus chronicling nearly all
the major entertainment figures of the 20th century. During his eight-decade career, he gained fame
by illustrating the actors, singers, and dancers of various Broadway plays,
which would appear in advance in The New York Times to
herald the play's opening. Though the theater was his best-known field of
interest, according to Hirschfeld's art dealer Margo Feiden, he actually drew
more for the movies than he did for live plays. "By the ripe old age of
17, while his contemporaries were learning how to sharpen pencils, Hirschfeld
became an art director at Selznick Pictures .
He held the position for about four years, and then in 1924 Hirschfeld moved to
Paris to work and lead the Bohemian life. Hirschfeld also grew a beard,
necessitated by the exigencies of living in a cold water flat. This he retained
for the next 75 years, presumably because "you never know when your oil
burner will go on the fritz." In addition to Broadway and film,
Hirschfeld also drew politicians, TV stars, and celebrities of all stripes
from Cole Porter and
the Nicholas Brothers to
the cast of Star Trek: The Next
Generation . He also caricatured jazz musicians— Glenn Miller , Duke Ellington , Count Basie , Dizzy Gillespie , Billie Holiday , and Ella Fitzgerald —and rockers The Beatles , Elvis Presley , Bruce Springsteen , Bob Dylan , Jerry Garcia , and Mick Jagger . In 1977 he drew the cover of Aerosmith 's Draw the Line album.
Hirschfeld drew many original movie posters, including for Charlie Chaplin 's films, as well as The Wizard of Oz (1939).
The "Rhapsody in Blue "
segment in the Disney film Fantasia 2000 was inspired by his designs, and
Hirschfeld became an artistic consultant for the segment; the segment's
director, Eric Goldberg ,
is a longtime fan of his work. Further evidence of Goldberg's admiration for
Hirschfeld can be found in Goldberg's character design and animation of the
genie in Aladdin (1992).
He was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary film , The Line
King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996). |