Stefan Hirsch (1899-1964) was a professor of painting at Bard College beginning in 1942 until his retirement in 1960. He was born in 1899 in Germany, where he began studying art. In 1917, he immigrated to the United States. After studying with Hamilton Easter Field, he became associated with the Precisionist movement in American art, which included artists such as Charles Sheeler, George Ault, Joseph Stella, and Charles Demuth, among others. Like many of this group from the 1920s and 1930s, Hirsch received acclaim for his clean, geometric, and mechanistic style then in vogue as a result of rise of modernist art in the United States. In 1930 in New York City, he married Elsa Rogo, an artist and noted photojournalist. Together, they spent an extended honeymoon in Mexico, visiting pre-Columbian sites and befriending artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco. Hirsch and Rogo travelled between the United States and Latin America for the remainder of Hirsch’s life. Hirsch continued painting and printmaking, while Rogo worked as a photojournalist and teacher.

In the 1930s, he was involved in the New Deal Arts programs, and taught mural painting and art criticism at Bennington College in Vermont, and the Art Students League in New York City. In 1942, Stefan Hirsch accepted a teaching appointment in painting at Bard College, where he led the Division of the Arts. He taught at Bard until his retirement in 1960. In 1961 he was granted the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Bard College. He passed away in 1964. After his death, Elsa Rogo stayed in contact with the College, and donated much of their material and artwork to its collections. Hirsch’s first retrospective exhibition occurred in 1964 at Bard College, and another was organized at the Phillips Collection in 1977.