Joseph Hirsch

Joseph Hirsch was an American artist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art before moving to New York City to study with George Luks. Luks introduced the young artist to Social Realism. He served as a pictorial war correspondent for the navy during World War II, making war posters and depicting the troops on the battlefield. Many of his drawings and paintings from this time are in the Museum of Military History.

In an interview, Hirsch once said ''I believe that some day the fabric of art will be threaded with morality, enabling us to distinguish evil from good. Today, this is unthinkable, in the delightful art world where, excepting censorship, anything goes. But anything goes does not accord with the more discriminating ethics of our civilized code which rules out what is socially destructive.''