Artur Rubinstein

As a young man Hirschfeld studied painting, and worked only intermittently as a caricaturist. By the 1940s, he had developed a style that relied on expressive, looped strokes and little or no shading. Hirschfeld mastered lithography as a student in Paris in the 1920s and continued to make prints throughout his career. This 1981 lithograph of pianist Artur Rubinstein demonstrates a late preference for reducing forms to their essentials. The body is formed from a simple triangle, used to support a thoughtful head and two dynamic hands. Few lines were needed to describe the features: the ear is an X within a C, while the hands, characteristically enlarged, embody the ninety-four-year-old Rubenstein’s still vital musicality.