Pearl Hirshfield 1922-2023

Pearl Hirshfield

Pearl Hirshfield, 101, International Artist and Social Justice Advocate
Pearl Hirshfield used her talent in mixed media to address universal concerns for justice, peace, and the environment at local, national, and international levels. Her artwork documentedcontemporary and historic events and political situations with insight and unrelenting passion. Equally important, her art raised awareness for humanitarian issues in more than 100 exhibits, including museum collections.
Chicago icon and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, historian, and broadcaster, Studs Terkel wrote a forward to her exhibit and Leon Golub reviewed Hirshfield’s art, such as “American Dream,” “The Thought Controllers,” Mad[e] in U.S.A.,” and “Third World Police Torture-Chicago Style.” He found that the breadth of her studies “indicate . . . the range of her work but don’t begin to indicate the probing and analytic force of her art. . . . Hirshfield’s art speaks to our times with powerful integrity and experimental directness.”
According to her daughters, their mother died on April 13.
Hirshfield was born Pearl Belly on July 5, 1922 to Louis (Laib) Benjamin Belly and Helena (Anna) Nissenson, both immigrants from Ukraine and Poland. She grew up on Chicago’s west side. From her earliest days, Hirshfield viewed creating art as a lifelong ambition. By the time she was a teenager, Hirshfield had sold her watercolors through Woolworths, a retail five-and-dime store, under the pseudonym Pearli.
Hirshfield pursued art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her B,F,A., as well as art and theater at Northwestern University and Columbia College. Through the years, she created prints, drawings, sculptures, and museum-sized installations. She exhibited her art nationwide and in Japan, Poland; Czechoslovakia; Kenya; Hungary; China; Switzerland, and Belgium. These exhibits garnered more than a dozen awards and fellowships.
The common theme threaded throughout Hirshfield’s projects remained social justice. As Stephen C. Feinstein, co-curator of the Hirshfield’s 1995 Witness and Legacy exhibit at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls said, “A quick glance at her extensive past political actions reveals her involvement, both as artist and political activist on issues pertaining to the peace movement, nuclear disarmament, fighting racism, and supporting rights for women.”
Hirshfield confirmed that “my art centers on the outrage I feel when confronted with the inequities and injustices of society, whether local, national, or global.”
In 1972, she created a portfolio titled, “Conspiracy, the Artist as Witness” to raise funds for the Chicago 7, the groupthat protested the war in Vietnam at the Chicago Democratic convention. “Conspiracy” contained 150 limited edition prints from thirteen artists, which she later turned into a companion book with proceeds going to the Center for Constitutional Rights. To promote the book, composer and orchestra conductor Leonard Bernstein hosted the Conspiracy book release party in his New York home.
Through the years, she arranged for other well-known entertainers to highlight fundraisers for different causes. Folk singer Joan Baez sang at the Hirshhfield house, as did Odetta. Each showcased the depth of Hirshfield’s commitment to a cause and attracted like-minded people to promote some aspect of peace.
Hirshfield helped organize annual Peace and World Affairs backyard fairs. The fairs raised money for peace abroad and civil rights in America. “Civil rights marches generated First Amendment issues of the right to protest,” Hirshfield said of heradvocacy. “Police and guards committed unlawful acts, but thepursuit of civil liberties bound people together. Anger overpowered our feelings of fear.”
Many of these efforts enraged those against peacework. Racist hate groups telephoned threats to the women involved in marching and raising funds and awareness, including Hirshfield. “Peace was a dirty word back then,” she remembered. Still, she persisted.
Hirshfield cofounded the Evanston Peace Center and assisted in creation of the Chicago Peace Museum. In addition to peace work, she marched for civil rights and women’s rights, helping to organize Chicago’s 1983 Mother’s Day Peace Marchand Woman Made Gallery, one of the first women-owned art galleries in the nation. In 2010, she received the Women’s Caucus for the Arts Excellence in Art Award.
While working to grow a more peaceful and equitable world, Hirshfield cared for her growing family. She met and married Dr. Hyman J. Hirshfield in1944. Their marriage thrived for sixty-six years until his death in 2010. The couple had four daughters: Jo-Anne (deceased), Leslie, Laura, Deborah, and grandson Justin Samuel Hirshfield Garrick and a great granddaughter
More recently, Hirshfield turned her artistic talent to environmental issues. Two outdoor sculptures located in her hometown of Evanston, IL, attest to her concern. As educator Leon Golub from University of Wisconsin at River Falls wroteof Hirshfields wide-ranging art, “It’s surprising, if not shocking, that after [all these] years, her work is not better known to national and international audiences. Hirshfield’s art speaks to our times with powerful integrity and experimental directness.
In keeping with this integrity, Hirshfield requested that her body be donated to science. Donations can go to the Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Fund, c/o Evanston Publish Library, 1703 Orrington Ave., Evanston IL 60201; Community Health, c/o Development, 2611 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60622; or Woman Made Gallery, 32150 S. Canalport Ave., 4A-3, Chicago, IL 60608.